I was a pirate before you were even born.

With my trusty Grundig tape recorder, wires clumsily attached to the radio speaker, I denied the Beatles and the Rolling Stones their due. They seem to have managed without me.

My most valuable recording is now lost, gone to magnetic heaven as we used to say. It was my voice, unbroken, “testing one two three”, before I was overtaken by the ravages of puberty. There is, of course, an irony in that a decade later I was getting a windfall from the sale of vinyl records.

• Foxtel drops prices, tells pirates ‘you’re welcome’

• Piracy time: call to ban smart watches in cinemas

• Dallas Buyers Hunt: search for Aussie downloaders

It is interesting and instructive that the notion of copyright was formulated by printers and not authors. I remember being somewhat irritated to read in a history of Festival Records, who underwrote the Skyhooks, that its owner, Rupert Murdoch was constantly at the door of the record company requisitioning cash for further newspaper acquisitions.

I must share the blame for what has come to pass. Or should I thank him for his largesse?

Australia is the world leader in internet piracy. It’s good to be good at something. This is clearly a first world problem in that the requirements are technology and idleness. If you actually inhabited the apocalyptic world of “The Walking Dead” you wouldn’t have time for the telly.

New laws of surveillance that take in your downloading history might make one think that these halcyon days of data socialism are over, but let me allay your fears. I use VPNs, the Tor network and a sandbox in the way one might wear three condoms on party night, but I doubt that I will escape notice. However, it has always been my understanding that only real crime is selling that which you do not own.

If you manufacture a boxed set of Game of Thrones and sell it from a trestle table at the Caribbean Gardens market then you’re on your own. The “Caribbean” was always a bit of a give away, wasn’t it?

When was the last time you bought a cassette in Bali? Or went to a video store? That whole model has evanesced.

Quality media production has migrated to cable for the simple reason that it has a paywall in place. It’s not really about bigger stories and more character development. It’s about the subscription and as soon as it gets to cable it is freed into the ocean of piracy. Foxtel has a copy protection system but let me offer an item of evidence.

Note the telltale Foxtel pause/play symbol at the bottom left. My local electronics shop gleefully fell over themselves to render assistance in this endeavour. And why should Foxtel care? I pay for my subscription.

According to Kim Dotcom , he observed all the correct copyright protocols, which basically amounts to removing any item if the owner objects. These are the same protocols that YouTube and Facebook observe. His real crime was making a lot of money by offering fast servers. Google welcomes infringement in their own Machiavellian way.

I posted a video that was an amalgam of Citizen Kane and a Rupert Murdoch interview. YouTube promptly identified it as a “possible” copyright infringement and offered me the opportunity to argue my case. They’ve either got some Korean schmuck watching every video uploaded or an algorithm. Naturally, I declined their offer since I didn’t have a case.

As a result, that particular video now carries advertising, which I had hitherto declined because the peppercorn per billion views was not worth the bother. It’s a nifty work-around on their part which furnishes revenue to them.

When it comes to music they really don’t give a toss. Presumably because there is no longer a viable and cashed up lobby that is pressing them to prosecute.

It is possible to download original multitrack recordings from the 70s that contain the isolated tracks from a recording sessions. They’re fun to play with if, like me, you once inhabited that world. I have a piece that contains multiple infringements but I have not heard a peep from them.

Finally, in regard to current laws and the pastime of downloading, who can they sue? There are five in our household. Are they going to sue the modem?

Well yes, as it turns out, they are. It is proposed under current legislation to throttle the speed of repeat offenders.

My argument will be that the post-it note with the password on it kept falling off so we left it unsecured.

Those bloody neighbours!