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"But obviously free access is better for science as a whole"

That's not totally obvious without sorting out the details. Similar to copyright, it seems to be inefficient (in the sense that it artificially restricts supply) but certainly a lot of people think it helps improve the overall supply of creative works.

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But that's not how science publication works (and I say this as a scientist). When someone makes a creative work they may (or may not) want to get paid for it, and copyright helps in this regard. Scientists don't get paid for their articles -- the only people who make money off of scientific publications are the publishers. This was needed in the days when dead tree journals were the only way to get scientific papers distributed, but this isn't true any more. And even if you are talking about peer review, it is important to understand that the reviewers aren't employed by the journals -- they are unpaid volunteers. It is really unclear what if anything journal publishers contribute to the scientific ecosystem at this point.

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