We agree that to operate a business one needs revenues. We agree that sales of non-public-domain works and value-added services are appropriate avenues for improving revenues.
Where we differ in opinion seems to be that I do not believe that a company can take a public domain work, wave a magic terms of service, and then sell it back to the public.
This actually happens all of the time, see the copies of Shakespeare and Beethoven on sale at your local bookstore. The content is being repackaged and sold, but that doesn't negate the fact that the works are still available for free somewhere else because they are public domain.
I'm not doing a particularly good job of pinning you down, but look, my complaint is that regardless of the availability of particular individual public domain works JSTOR's TOS contains language preventing the coordinated download of the entire public domain archive, and will block your MAC address if you try to download too much of the public's works.
Correct. Downloading their entire archive and putting it online somewhere else puts their business at risk and will prevent them from recouping costs they've invested and asked users to pay for (by legally signing up for an account and paying them). Just because it is public domain doesn't mean it can be taken and posted elsewhere.
I disagree with the premise that it can be called "their" archive if it contains none but public domain works. Can you have ownership over a collection of things that you don't own?
"Just because it is public domain doesn't mean it can be taken and posted elsewhere." No, that is precisely what it means - the collective commons owns this; ownership means having the right to use your property. These works are your property, my property, our property.
You cannot walk into Barnes and Noble and take a copy of Penguin Publishings' The Complete Works of William Shakespeare off of the shelf and walk out with it without paying just because the work is in the public domain (Note: lets not get into the digital vs. physical depriving anyone of content argument for the 10000th time).
Time and money was spent organizing and publishing the book / article, so they do have a right to charge for it. If you want wholesale free access to public domain documents, then you find a place which will provide these to you for free. You don't get to ignore a companies right to charge for something just because you disagree with the premise.
I suggested that JSTOR make its public domain works available for bulk download through AWS S3 Requestor-Pays buckets. Please don't misstate my position - I haven't endorsed Aaron's Guerrilla Open Access position.
Where we differ in opinion seems to be that I do not believe that a company can take a public domain work, wave a magic terms of service, and then sell it back to the public.