> Authors signed over their copyright to Elsevier, and like any other copyright holder Elsevier can license its property toward any legal purpose that advances its business interests.

I have two counter arguments here:

1. Funding agencies should not permit this. If I were to fund public research, the results should be public under an appropriate license.

2. Something is very wrong with the system if authors are willing to do this without being paid. If Elsevier paid the author $3k, that would be another story. (And possibly unethical.)