OK, copyright violations are not equivalent to stealing bread to feed your children in Dickens' England, but neither are they equivalent to the Nazi genocide. We don't need to re-Godwin this thread every few pages...
The problem is that you can't selectively apply a social contract. Once a society lets these types of agreements be trampled willy-nilly, all bets are off: "They" are stealing from us, why shouldn't we steal from "them"? The IP owners are certainly not setting an example of restraint and ethical behavior, even if they have convinced the government to back them up.
I am not sure who was arguing that the breakdown of social consensus around copyright "harms no one", but when you declare "no rules in a knife fight", someone is going to get kicked in the nuts.