Wow, as a tribute Aaron Swartz, who hanged himself last week while facing charges for distributing millions of papers for free through JSTOR, academics all over the world are posting .pdfs of their papers online.
Access to most of these papers is likely restricted because they are stuck behind journal publisher paywalls. This means the only people with access to most research are members of the academy or institutions because they can afford the massive subscription fees.
This also means that the money goes to the journal publishing house, and not the researchers who write the papers.
There is an Open Access movement afoot to change this. Perhaps now it can achieve critical mass.