Kudos to MIT! Here’s the gist of the article. SAE decided to protect their content with DRM. MIT did not like it so they decided to stop providing access to SAE’s database. Most interesting is the reaction of the faculty:

In addition to Professor Cheng, the MIT Libraries consulted with other faculty members who publish or use SAE content. The responses were uniformly against accepting DRM, even if it meant losing ready access to SAE papers. When informed that the SAE feels the need to impose DRM to protect their intellectual property, Professor John Heywood, the Director of MIT’s Sloan Automotive Lab, who publishes his own work with the SAE, responded with a question: “Their intellectual property?” He commented that increasingly strict and limiting restrictions on use of papers that are offered to publishers for free is causing faculty to become less willing to “give it all away” when they publish.

Publishers cannot bite the hand that feeds them without risking their very livelihood.