Unless you're in academia, you'd have no idea. I spent a few years in academia while pursuing my Masters. Dropped out for various reasons and never had any idea this was such a huge thing - mainly because as a university student, you just always had access.
I got a small glimpse when I got a job a few years later working for a rather large legal publisher and how locked down they kept all of their online materials for anybody outside of academics. Its when I really understood there was a massive war raging about access to this stuff and the publishers trying to eek out every penny from granting access to materials and research that should have been just in the public domain. I didn't stay there long and had almost forgotten about all that stuff until 2011 when it broke into the news cycle again.
You're 100% right, this should really be a much larger issue and covered more regularly, it has massive implications on research and copyrights. Remember how long the issues of Napster and piracy have been in the media for so long (there was just another HN topic this week), but this? Not much is ever really talked about it - it just seems to linger in the shadows, which is depressing.