I argued that copyright should be viewed as a contract. David replied:

Consequently society - other people - may choose not to enforce certain types of contract. Morally, why should they?

Indeed. Nobody is forced to enforce any contract. But in a free society one will always be able to find someone willing to enforce a certain contract. So even if only 1% of arbitration agencies enforce copyright contracts, one can still hire one of those 1% to enforce the contract. If the other 99% do not agree with the legality they might use force to prevent the 1% from enforcing copyright contracts. Whether that would be right depends on the question of whether copyright contracts are legal. So my point is that David's distinction between legality and morality does not solve the problem. In a society where copyrights are considered illegal and immoral, copyrights can not be enforced. In a society where copyrights are considered legal but immoral, copyrights will be enforced.

David also writes:

A related issue is this: if no harm has been done, surely the plaintiff should not be allowed to sue for damages: there were none.

Perhaps. But this can be solved by specifying payments in the contract. If I download software costing 10 euros I might be asked to agree that if I allow someone to copy it, then I will pay a charge of 1000 euros. If society believes in freedom of contract that contract can be enforced, not because of the principle of damages but because of the principle of property exchange.

Henry Sturman