The software industry has deployed the latest high-tech weapon in its fight against the billion-dollar scourge of software piracy — a cartoon ferret.
Decked in baggy jeans and a tight T-shirt, the grinning critter is the mascot of Playitcybersafe.com, a new Web site aimed at stopping kids before they make their first forays into software theft.
The Web site is the centerpiece of a campaign by the Business Software Alliance to teach kids as young as 8 years old “safe and responsible” computing practices, like avoiding the rampant software piracy that member companies like Microsoft and Adobe blame for eroding their profits.
“It’s never too early to start teaching kids about good behavior, the right thing to do is to reach out to them while they’re very young,” said BSA spokeswoman Diane Smiroldo, noting that some children get their first taste of Web surfing in preschool.
The software industry loses roughly $11 billion a year to piracy, the BSA estimates. The recording industry, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, loses more than $4 billion annually to illegal file-sharing and other forms of piracy, and the Motion Picture Association of America said film and video piracy costs the industry more than $3 billion every year.
The BSA has petitioned Congress to strengthen copyright protections, but it also pursues more direct methods. It runs a tipline for employees to report companies that use unlicensed or copied software and works with law enforcement to combat piracy rings around the world.
Playitcybersafe.com takes a gentler approach, trying to keep today’s children from becoming tomorrow’s intellectual property thieves. The site includes games featuring the cartoon ferret that seek to teach kids about software licenses, computers and pirated CD-ROMs. It also features a list of the usual safety tips for children online, including not engaging in online chats with strangers who could be sexual predators.
The site contains links to sample curricula for teachers to educate kids in grades 3-8 about software piracy and legal computing practices.
The BSA has distributed 35,000 hard copies of the curriculum to school districts in places such as Chicago, Silicon Valley, Seattle, the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, Dallas, San Antonio, New Orleans and Boston. It plans to encourage school districts in other areas to download online copies.
The Justice Department helped start the project with a $200,000 grant, and the BSA has supplied an undisclosed amount of additional funding.
Online child safety activist Donna Rice Hughes said that children need to learn good Internet behavior because they might not recognize right versus wrong at such early ages. “Kids particularly assume that if something is done by many people that they know, then it’s appropriate and legal,” she said.
Joseph Turow, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication who has studied the role of the Internet in the family, said the BSA is right to teach younger children the value of software because teenagers often are “beyond socializiation when it comes to this kind of thing.”
He questioned, however, whether the software industry’s message would be sufficient to teach kids good practices.
“A site like that might help a few teachers here and there [but] I think that we need a lot more than this,” Turow said. “We have to have a real social discussion at various ages about the ownership of intellectual property. I don’t think society is doing that right now.”
Parents also will need to help their children navigate Web sites like Playitcybersafe.com to understand the message, who is delivering it and why, said Noah Schuchman, spokesman for the National Institute on Media and the Family.
The BSA’s as yet unnamed ferret is not the first animal enlisted to teach safe computing practices. Last September, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) unveiled “Dewie” the Internet security turtle, a cartoon character that teaches Internet safety tips to adults and children.
Washington Post
Related
- Software Piracy Remains Widespread
- Assembly Passes Resolution Condemning Online Piracy
- Software Piracy Costs Exceeds 50 Billion
- The Anti-Piracy Ferret
- Software Piracy on the Rise, P2P Blamed
