Students from Sutherland Shire Christian School are taking the command "Thou shalt not steal' into the computer age, voluntarily handing over thousands of pirated CDs.

The student-led initiative was inspired by a single school assembly.

"We have an assembly every Monday morning and devotions are always part of that," says School Business Manager, Robert East.

This particular talk was taken from Exodus 20 and the Ten Commandments.

"One particular student who is a musician was particularly convinced by the devotion and gathered together with a group of 25 of his friends to discuss the implications," Mr East says.

The result?

The idea that pirating media qualified as stealing caught their consciences. It then spread rapidly through the school population.

By Monday May 23 1000 illegally burned CDs and DVDs had been handed over for destruction.

Another thousand were handed in during the next two days.

The school gym now contains more than 2000 illegally copied CDs and DVDs.

The haul represents a loss of close to $50,000 to the music and movie industries, based on normal retail values.

"The first student, a musician, realised a lot of people like him had put in hard work and he was stealing from them," Mr East says.

As the CDs arrive, they are glued to a banner which will be hung in the hall as a testimony to the teenagers' convictions.

"It will be up on the wall for awhile, but effectively they've been destroyed because they've been glued to the cloth and they can’t be read," Mr East says.

Music teacher and Sydney Anglican Jon Baldwin says the grassroots campaign points to the power of God working in students' lives.

"The decision taken by the students to honour Christ in a practical way has been a great encouragement to teachers, parents and other students," he says.