Hoping to spread the message to a new generation of students that copying software from the internet is wrong, the Business Software Alliance (BSA)—an industry trade group that represents software developers around the world—will distribute a free anti-piracy curriculum to 25,000 U.S. elementary and middle schools this August.

Although school leaders agree respecting intellectual property is an important concept for students to understand, some educators question the value of BSA's curriculum.

"Play It Safe in Cyberspace" is the second anti-piracy curriculum developed by BSA. The new curriculum will target young computer users.

"Kids are increasingly becoming more cyber-savvy at a younger age," said Laurie Head, BSA's director of marketing and communications. "We thought it was best to reach out to them at a younger age, when they are still forming their internet behaviors."

Software piracy remains a threat to the software industry.

"Almost half of all internet users have downloaded software on the internet. Eighty-one percent [of users] have not paid for all the copies they have made," Head said, citing figures from a BSA survey released May 29.

The U.S. software industry reportedly lost more than $2.6 billion to software piracy in 2000, according to "The 2000 Global Software Piracy Report" conducted by the International Planning and Research Corp.

"Piracy has increased worldwide three percentage points," added BSA spokeswoman Debbi Bauman.

In 1998, BSA created a similar curriculum with Scholastic Inc., called "Reboot Your Attitude," that focused on why kids shouldn't swap computer disks. But the proliferation of the internet has made it easier for students and others to copy software illegally, so the BSA felt the need to update its curriculum.

"There's more of an emphasis on the internet" in the new curriculum, Head said. "It still covers some of the same material, and it has more of an internet focus."

BSA is developing its newest curriculum with Weekly Reader, a 100-year-old company that publishes a weekly four-page newspaper for students in seven different grade levels that is distributed to some 50,000 schools nationwide.

The Play It Safe in Cyberspace curriculum includes a short teacher's guide, activity sheets, and a classroom poster. There are four activities for grades three to five and four activities for grades six to eight.

Students will address questions such as: What is creative work? What is copyright law? Who get hurts when you copy software? What's your piracy I.Q.?

"It'll involve some online work and some interactive discussion in the classroom," Head said.

One activity has students write their principal a letter that explains what they've learned about software piracy and then asks the principal to initiate a software audit of the school's software.