Intellectual armed robbery
Once upon a time publishers used to copy-edit, typeset, print and distribute journals. They never did peer review - fellow academics always did that, for nothing.
For over 20 years authors have been typesetting their own papers in LaTeX. More recently publishers have stopped even printing or distributing journals. They just run difficult-to-use websites, which I can do for myself, thank you. As for the copy-editing, ie the introduction of errors, don't get me started.
Academic authors are compelled to submit to the theft of their intellectual property by universities and goverments. Research funding and employment are increasingly determined by indices of journals. These are compiled by the publishing industry, on a commercial basis not an intellectual one, for example favouring homopathy over category theory.
After robbing academic authors of their intellectual property at gunpoint, publishers then sell it back to them and their universities in vastly over-priced journal subscriptions. I remind those who point out that governments and universities pay for the research in the first place that the "copyright transfer" is not to the university but to a commercial organisation that has contributed NOTHING to the process.
I don't care much about the music and videos that people copy, but I strongly suspect that the corporations that make so much fuss over this issue are directly related to the ones that steal my intellectual property off me.