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And what about the Play It Cyber-Safe campaign by the Business Software Alliance? Here a hip anthro-ferret offers kids a "Cyber Ethics Champion Code" and a game in which he battles the evil forces of copyright infringement. "Stop the pirates from freezing the city. Throw your ball into the pirates and their stolen software before they hit the ground."

That site's ferret mascot looks almost exactly like the BSA ferret. Whoa.

FARM EQUIPMENT!? We have ALREADY harnessed the awesome power of the weasel to fight cyber-crime...
[Play the BSA's weasel ball game!]

Also check out the "young girl" and "boy band" videos!

FARM EQUIPMENT!? We have ALREADY harnessed the awesome power of the weasel to fight cyber-crime...
[Play the BSA's weasel ball game!]

Also check out the "young girl" and "boy band" videos!

I dont know about you but I think there is something fundamentally wrong with encouraging kids to move thier ferrets around and to throw ferret balls at people.

What about the Children!?!?

"Stop the pirates from freezing the city. Throw your ball into the pirates and their stolen software before they hit the ground. Use your mouse to move your ferret and press the "A" key to kick your ball! Be sure to catch the license to protect your city"

http://www.playitcybersafe.com/kids/games/deepfree ze/

Not bad, there's also:

Ashcroft, Orin, Hillary, Rosen, Snitch, Stoolie, Bill, Steve, Stinky, Stupid, Shifty, Satan, Enderle, Lyons, Didio, Jack, Valenti, Bono, Sonny, Cher, Evil, Cruella DeVille, Devil, Asshat, Bandit, Sneaky...

I'm sure a few of those are redundant ;)

Sadly, it says something about selecting one of 5 names, though it mentions a write-in candidate.

I assume that they'll submit their ideas somewhere around this part of the site.

Attached to the article is a lovely little game called Deep Freeze, and Christ almighty is it hard.

The point of the game is that you're supposed to use Rat Bastard (As I'm now referring to the Weasel) to kick a ball to destroy Pirates (Represented by a Skull and Crossbones) and Software (Represented by a CD. Note that I said software, not illegal software, just plain software. Interesting...) all while collecting Licenses to protect your city.

Ah, yes, you're asking the same question I was, "Protect it from what?" Quickly, you will learn the answer, to protect your fair city from being "frozen" by software piracy. The game is ridiculouslyhard and as far as I played it, is impossible to win. I can only assume that this is by design to show kids how hard it is to "defend" against the deluge of pirated software.

Man, does anyone else feel like they're in some kind of really weird, fucked up movie with a bad plot everytime they read this absolutly insane software piracy shit? Seriously, it seems like I'm inside of some horrible plot hole whenever I read the BSA is working in conjunction with Weekly Reader (Which I remember from back when I was in school) in order to indoctrinate 4th graders to believe software piracy is some sort of scourge of the Universe. Back when I read Weekly Reader, it had stuff about all kinds of exotic animals, something about space, or just anything else kids thought was really cool. Now it teaches them about Copyright laws?

What the fuck? This country really needs to get its shit back together. I love America, but I fear for our future when corporations can have the power to set ciriculum, especially for such young, impressionable kids like this.

You have to check out this game they cooked up to go along with this drivel. Notice that the CDs are "bad" along with the skull and cross bones. And, don't forget to grab to licenses or else your current business model might fail! "No thanks mom, I don't really want Doom 3 anymore now that I can play Pirate Deep Freeze!"

A Cyber-Ethics Champion Code with items such as

I look for the copyright symbol (©) whenever I add a new program or game to my computer.

Why? First of all, use of the mark is now optional, at least in the U.S. Second, the mark itself doesn't explain to the child (or anyone else) whether or not a program may be copied (e.g., GPL'd software is copyrighted). The license does. Which leads us to...

I know that the copyright owner gets to decide how many times a software program can be copied. That means I can't copy the software that is running on my home computer unless the license for that program says I can.

So the assumption is that a child young enough to be attracted to the weasel-ferret-whatever mascot will read and understand the license agreements included with his or her software? Perhaps the BSA wants to donate to some sort of fund for early legal education?

I guess the problem I have with all this is, there's currently a lot of controversy surrounding free software, copyright, patents, and other "intellectual property" issues, and if we're not prepared to educate our children about the issues, we shouldn't allow the "voice of the world's commercial software industry" to do it for us, any more than we allow McDonald's to educate our children about nutrition. Oh, wait...

At this website They have shockwave games for the kids to play!

Help the weasel (how ironic!) protect the city from pirates and pirated software and prevent the deep freeze!

The funniest point is that there is no goal to the game at all, you keep going until you lose. So you do your best to protect the city from pirated software and software pirates, but eventually, you will lose and the pirates take over.

How true! To bad the BSA can't take their own advice!