What can seem like a small improvement can often delay or even prevent major overhaul of the system. It's throwing a few crumbs at the starving peasants and we

What can seem like a small improvement can often delay or even prevent major overhaul of the system. It's throwing a few crumbs at the starving peasants and we scramble to pick them from the ground instead of demanding shares of the bread. There should not be private companies profiting off publicly funded research in the first place. If it's like you say and universities will be paying those fees, that's in some ways even worse. It wouldn't surprise me if the feudal copyright lords like Elsevier actually supported this. Best thing that can happen to them is getting their fees under the table and not in the open. The less students and the public understand about how it works, the better from their point of view.