Reasonable minds certainly differ. Licensing, password protection, IP recognition, et al are certainly costly to producers, to libraries, and to our patrons. I think so. Imagine the benefit to our patrons if the entire panoply of scholarly periodicals, and the requisite indexes, were available from any computer with web access. As it stands now, no one has convenient access to the full range of scholarly periodicals.
Scholarship suffers, and publishers struggle with unpredictable revenue streams.
One way to approach this problem is to acquire more funding for libraries. I am pleased to explain. First, let me supply a precedent. It is described in Science and Technology Act of 1958. Senate Committee on Government Operations on S.3126 .