That said, I've encountered many scientists who simply never thought about it before we discussed it, and who now think the situation is absolutely crazy, as anyone would. The questions are: What can they do about it? Do they have the time to do it? How can they do it without hurting themselves?
Indeed, it's hard enough to get a position as it is, refusing to publish in prestigious journal owned by asshole publishers won't help young scientists. Older scientists often work with young ones, and they can't tell them "no we won't publish in the asshole-owned prestigious journal because it's the right thing to do", it wouldn't be fair.
The reality is that the solution can't really come only from individuals, it has to be a legal battle, not only for future publications (which is the easiest part), but also for all the past ones. The entire Elsevier "Freedom Collection" for example should be seized by governments (UN?) and made available for free to anyone on the internet and in public libraries worldwide. But in this "free-market" economy, this is not something people seems to be ready to ear, let alone understand.
It seems to vary strongly by field though, some fields seem much more bullish on "open access" than others.
If my country's government says that from 2015 onwards, only publications that can be freely accessed count towards public grant requests, tenure and positions in public institutions, etc.; in a year no one would be published in the asshole-owned journals.
Instead, my government has policies that actively incentivize publishing in said journals (basically ISI JCR journal papers are what counts for everything).
Get the top people in a field to collectively decide to create/back a new journal. Because they are the top, what they publish in will "automatically" become prestigious, assuming the journal is selective. Once the journal is well established, the up and coming will start publishing there too.