Except for the few open access journals out there, this is pretty much how all academic journals work.

Which is why I have never paid for an academic article from a publisher.

I have been e-mailing authors directly for access to the article and have been successful most of the time. Maybe once or twice, the e-mails go unanswered. In one case, the primary author had died (a subsequent search linked a news article showing a skiing accident). In another case, the author had simply moved to a different university thus the e-mail in the paper was outdated.

This is pretty much a standard model in academic publishing

Except for open access models where someone -- usually the authors, but sometimes universities or other institutions -- pay so that the article can be accessed by the public for free. (Authors usually don't pay out of pocket but using grants, and OA journals usually offer some sort of "financial aid" for those unable to pay.)

What a waste of money to pay these parasites to let the public see your research.

It’s just as much a waste of grant money too. Whether that comes from or from a nonprofit, padding the pockets of some publishing company gatekeeper is in no way what anyone should expect their money to go toward.

True, and unfortunate, other than arxiv, and openreview

It’s a little hard to tell from the article, but I think this is about books not research articles, and that the authors have some amount of revenue sharing.