In reply to David Crotty.

I take the point its an imperfect analogy but I'm not really trying to make an argument here but focus on the mindset that I think is trapping a certain kind of publisher into thinking about every new form of re-use as a potential income stream and not recognising that the whole approach is starting to cause problems - and really irritate certain portions of the research community. Possibly I should have said that at the top - when I use this in a talk it is to try and quickly illustrate what I see as a mental trap - not to make a broader rhetorical point.
I am actually looking for a better analogy that doesn't devolve into reports or something similar. Its hard to get to the heart of the issues without provoking all sorts of Pavlovian responses from all sides - so a good analogy would actually be really useful if it enabled a clear discussion of issues with a little less heat. I don't think the various food analogies are too good either. I tried to come up with something to do with living space and tardises but that became way too contrived very quickly.
As a side point for a number of my own papers I don't actually have a pdf (or at least not a legitimately obtained copy). In most of these cases my only legitimate path to a copy is via the rental $30 a copy/day route.