The lawsuit against Sci-Hub begs the question: Why are academic journals so expensive, anyway?

" ... And information has rarely been more accessible than it is on the controversial website Sci-Hub, which offers completely free access to pretty much any academic journal article ever published. The site does this through what is commonly termed “content piracy” and has been in the news lately because academic publishers are trying very hard to shut the website down.  They aren’t having much success: It’s hosted overseas, and its proprietor, the Kazakh researcher Alexandra Elbakyan, does not seem particularly worried about the niceties of U.S. copyright law, much to her opponents’ dismay. (Academic publisher Elsevier is attempting to sue Elbakyan in federal court and won a preliminary injunction last year that temporarily shuttered Sci-Hub; the site soon returned under a different domain name.) ..."