I would venture to say that all of our institutions of higher learning receive federal and state money. Each of them, as well, has an active program in place to seek out charitable contributions from alumni and other likely victims. "Help us teach the world", they tell us, as their hand reaches out for our checkbook.
There is a tradition in science of collaboration between institutions. Even countries that have political tension between them embrace, or at least succumb to, the notion of the importance of this collaboration.
Yet here we are, being asked to buy an 11 year old paper. Indeed, there's hardly an interesting paper written by anybody in academia that is easily available. Sure, you may be able to hunt it down, or go to the authors website, or pirate a copy. Why is this necessary? Why is this information sold to the world in small, hard to search doses, rather than being made freely available? Can you imagine the disservice done to mankind by this silly practice? How many inventions have not been invented? How many discoveries have not been made? This is not a drug company that's invested billions in R&D, and so deserves the fruits of it's labor. This is work by our young PhD students, funded using tax and charity money, in fields that claim to place a high value on the free exchange of knowledge, and we're still buying 11 year old academic papers.
I want academic papers to be free and available and searchable. I've already paid for them.