Even if they could (and they can publish their preprints), scientists rarely bother. That's because they want to communicate their science to people who matter to them (e.g. grant giving bodies), not to the general public.
Copyright, according to the US Constitution, exists for the public good:
> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
You may disagree with that conclusion, but there's 200+ years of belief that it's possible to be "for the public good" and be covered under copyright which restricts redistribution. The short term loss is outweighed by the long term gain, or so the belief holds.
Bear in mind that the copyright term back then was decades shorter than it is now.
That said, grant organizations are turning towards requiring publication either in an open access journal, or by having papers restricted for only a short time, rather than the full length of copyright.
The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, and even the Act before it (the Copyright Act of 1976) seems to rather violate the constitution then:
1. It doesn't promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts
2. 120 years since creation or 95 years since publication for corporations, or the life of the author plus 70 years is not what I would call particularly "limited Times".
There may be 200+ years of belief in copyright, but things have significantly changed in the last several thirty years. Copyright doesn't make as much sense as it used to, and though openness and transparency has always been supported in theory (and in practice by a minority) movements that support Open Source over a range of disciplines far greater than just software are now quite significant. Whilst it predates the Internet in it's current form, the current web and other global distribution mechanisms powered by the Internet have radically changed a lot of people's views about freedom of expression and ideas.
Your objections were presented to the Supreme Court, who decided they were not actually un-Constitutional in Eldred v. Ashcroft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft . You won't be the first to disagree with a Supreme Court decision. But the only recourse you have is get the courts change their mind in the future, or amend the Constitution.
I have a hard time empathizing with an argument which, with the change of a few ephemeral names, Mad Libs style, could have been said at any time in the last 200 years.
The statement "thing have significantly changed in the last several thirty years" has been true for centuries. People in the the 1950s, or 1910s, or 1870s, could and likely did say the same thing.
Nor is your rhetoric about "openness and transparency" unique to these last two decades. Look to the populists and muckrakers from around 1900s as effective proponents of that. Look to the newspapers of the late 1800s, when the Linotype made it possible to have cheap newspapers, and look to the growth of wire services and the telephone, radio, and television, as recent examples of other technologies which have "radically changed a lot of people's views about freedom of expression and ideas."
I had no intention to argue against your character, nor upon rereading do I see myself doing that.
I do argue against the meaningfulness of your comments, given the judgement in Eldred, and given the last 250 years of incessant technological change. I also think you, like many, see the near history with a much better focus than the further past. But that is not a character flaw.
Well, I'm glad to see I was wrong :-) thank you. It's just you seemed to compare my, uh, rhetoric to what the "populists and muckrackers" of the 1900s were saying. Though in certain company I guess that could be considered high praise, I'm not sure I was too fond of the comparison...
My intent was to say that 100 years ago people would have said that the muckrakers and populists pushed for a level of "openness and transparency" which had never before been seen. I don't see how that is coupled to your character.
In the 1970s, after the Watergate hearings and the new FOIA and Sunshine laws, people again could have, and likely did, say that it was also a level of openness and transparency which had never before been seen.
Your essential argument seems to be "things are different now so throw out the old". But things always change, so that argument is always true, and can be therefore be used to justify anything.
I think it's a mistake to assume the general public must have access to the paper for it to advance the public good. A climate change paper does good even if the general public doesn't read it.
Furthermore, most of these papers are available to the public, just not online.
Many libraries have copies of the works.
I do think the pricing for non-institutional clients is absurd. Paying 30 bucks just to get past the abstract is nuts.
Nature, for example, permits private redistribution of accepted papers - I could send you a copy if you asked me for one - but requires exclusive publishing rights - I couldn't just put it on my website for anyone to take.
There is an expectation that each publication is a new piece of research and having the same work published in more than one journal and one conference is considered to be somewhat fraudulent. Just think of it: if researchers started to double publish, what would happen with the administrative "objective" process of giving the money to the guy with most bullet points on his list?
What excludes the academic from also publishing elsewhere?