The research itself is funded by the tax payer. The peer review is funded by the tax payer. What endowment funding is needed to replace whatever Springer is actually providing?

This whole mess is solvable with a single law. Just have the EU or the US legislate that any tax payer funded research (including research with external grants but done by researchers in public universities) needs to be available free of charge for download to any citizen. The whole "sector" would unravel pretty quickly after that as it should. Charging the tax payer, through huge contracts like this one being renegotiated in France, huge sums for access to the very research the tax payer has already paid for to be done in the first place is a complete travesty.