[chancho]

Where do Google Scholar and CiteSeer fit into this analogy?

Can't speak for other fields, but in CS any outlet worth submitting to will let you post a preprint on your own website, and from there Google Scholar will pick it up and place the link to your free copy right next to the paywall link. It's not a perfect system---it's like an extreme form price discrimination, like when Microsoft turns a blind eye to piracy in emerging markets---but it does give access to those who can't pay, and its not as dystopian as you make it out to be.

[wgrover]

I think that CS is a lot more open than other fields, even putting preprints online and soliciting feedback before publication (that's unheard of in chemistry and biology). You're right that some authors put PDFs of their papers on their websites and Google Scholar finds them, but I frequently need papers that I can only get through interlibrary loan (and I work at MIT; even a relatively wealthy university can't afford everything).