Of all the crazy parts of our crazy system, the craziest part is where taxpayers pay for the research, then pay private companies to publish it, and then pay again so scientists can read it. We may not agree on much, but we can all agree on this: it is time, finally and forever, to get rid of for-profit scientific publishers.
People should make their own papers available for free, either on Bittorrent or just upload it publicly in many places (ideally both). It’s not like you get anything when people pay to access it from one of these journals.
They absolutely should, I agree, and I think many folks will email you a copy if you ask. Also, sometimes the journals have clauses when you agree to publish, like you can’t upload to your website the same version that they published, at least for 1-5 years. I still think people should do it anyway, anonymously, but I wanted to add that point about the extra legal bullshit.