it's a hassle but if you google the author's name, chances are high that you'll find their webpage that links to the pdf of the paper. They're likely to also have other resources like videos, and related reading.
- published draft versions are often just called draft for legal reasons and content-wise identical to the final versions
- http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/ has a public "cached" version of many papers that aren't publicly available on other sites.
Also, if there is some paper you just can't find, you could try posting its name (or a link to the paywalled site) here. There lots of academic people on HN. Someone here may be able to help you out.
I think all research should be made freely available.
The current situation is just sad.
