Profits are neither good nor bad. Providing a needed product is good for society. Reducing the cost of the product is also good, because it allows us to produce more of it. Therefore, for the benefit of society, profits must be kept to the minimum necessary to incentivize production. And that's what happens in a free market: competition drives down profits. Any profits are a signal that the market is not very free, and large profits are a signal that the market is very nonfree.

What's happening with #icanhazpdf is that researchers are innovating to find ways to provide the product (access to research papers) at a much lower cost than Elsevier provides it — free, in fact. However, Elsevier, rather than compete with them, seeks to enforce government-granted monopolies on providing this service, known as copyrights, in order to protect their profits, at the cost of providing benefits to society.