It is not really hard to understand why they’re in this position and it isn’t really anybody’s “fault”,

It absolutely is the someone’s fault, and that someone is the publishers. They wanted this. This is why they pushed for copyright to be extended to all works regardless of whether they were commercial or not (who — honestly speaking — wants to copyright a letter to Aunt Martha?). They wanted a situation where all — as opposed to very little — information was subject to their monopolies. They wanted a situation where ambiguity protected works that authors did not wish to protect, where publication would be suppressed by doubt (as opposed to the law). They wanted a situation where all information was government by law. They wanted a situation where information could be called “property”.

And they succeeded — in the very face of the First Amendment. So, the publishers all owe society for what they stole from us: Our Right to Free Speech. They should begin to pay us back my creating a database for us at their expense.