The web was originally designed to allow scientists to share data:

The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any information anywhere. [...] The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!" —from Tim Berners-Lee's first message

Today, you can search for hours for information on a topic - "deblurring algorithm", for example - and not find a single paper that isn't hidden behind a pay-per-download page. Oh well. I hope the authors of those papers get a cut of the download fees, at least.