The time was more than a decade ago. They've consistently chosen to do nothing more than make vague noises about improving.
In addition to the high seas we've got a plethora of preprint services. Between arxiv and bioarxiv alone you can access a decent chunk of the modern literature. What we need at this point is for institutions to require uploading all publications to one of a handful of officially sanctioned preprint services under a CC license and to strictly forbid publishing with any venue that objects to authors disseminating a CC licensed version of the work.