They were discussing requiring a large one time fee to access whatever academic database they were running so teachers and professors who only needed one article or something couldn’t “get away with spending less”.
Moved onto commiserating about how online schooling because of COVID has cut into their profits because they couldn’t force as many people to get print editions.
They discussed potentially leasing by the page to schools and charging fees per student view.
The existence of the academic publishing industry and the nature of its political economy is just another dead canary for capitalism