[jahewson]

> The authors retain copyright over their work

Absolutely not. Copyright is spit into several separable rights and the authors have signed some of these away. That they still own the majority of their rights under copyright is irrelevant.

> and have always had the right to distribute their papers on their personal websites

No they haven't. This was allowed (for preprints) under Elsevier's T&Cs only a few years ago. Authors have signed away their right to publish their work, so they need explicit permission.

You may not like the agreement, but it's perfectly valid under the law.