Open up your mind and say, ahh...

I support the fight against piracy and intellectual property theft. As an author and a creator, I hate when someone nabs my stuff, or doesn’t give me credit for my work, etc. Stealing is a crime. I’m not ever going to say otherwise.

I will, say, however, that I wish Hollywood and other publishers and creators would spend their time facilitating legal transactions, instead of working so hard to fight the bad guys. That above picture is so frustrating. (Can’t see it? Click Click Here).

I had every intention of purchasing an audio version of Eddie Izzard’s “Dress to Kill” concert performance. Only, the rights aren’t licensed for me because I’m in the US, and evidently, this is a UK-only project. Let’s say this again: I am over here with money looking to buy something and the publisher or distributor or some other legal holder of this material’s rights is saying, “Oh, we don’t want your money, Chris. Don’t worry about it.”

The writers of Toy Story are reportedly in talks to pen a movie based on FarmVille, the popular Facebook game.

Alec Sokolow and Joel Cohen said in an interview with IGN that they’re working with Zynga on a movie based on one of the company’s most popular games, adding “Can’t really say too much on that front yet, but ‘Old MacDonald’ didn’t have a factory, if you get our drift.”

We get it: Making a movie is super risky. Unlike launching new apps and websites, movies are a huge upfront investment in the vague hope of a hit. Hence the tendency to just remake something that’s already popular. Or the flurry of movies based on popular websites, apps and tech personalties. The Facebook movie. The Steve Jobs movie (possibly). The Angry Birds movie. Why take a chance on something new when you can buy the rights to something with tens of millions of fans already?

What does a FarmVille movie look like anyway? No doubt it’ll be a computer-animated feature (in 3D, of course!) incorporating the graphics and themes of the Facebook game. But FarmVille is a game in which you tend crops. Is that going to be a bit … boring? And while to tens of millions of people, FarmVille is an addictive pastime, for the friends of those people (ie. us!) it’s actually kind of a nuisance.

Would a FarmVille movie be met with glowing reviews or – more likely – an audible sigh from those of us who grudgingly tolerate the addiction of our FarmVille-playing friends and relatives? And could the critics be anything but, well, critical of this cynical attempt at turning a successful gaming franchise into an equally popular film?

Ah, but plenty can happen at these early stages — one of a hundred issues may prevent the movie from entering production. Not to mention that FarmVille is no longer the most popular Facebook game, reducing the potential audience for the movie. Or perhaps I’ll be proven sorely wrong. After all, a certain movie based on the Facebook story took home 3 Oscars this year.

PS. For those movie studios thinking of following suit, Zynga was kind enough to list its top-performing games – plus some intriguing stats – in its IPO filing earlier this year:

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

While social media has been around for a while, there are still aspects of it that are very new, such as policy development. Such policies have to stand the test of time and evolve as the workplace — and the social media platforms and their usage — changes.

In August, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) released a report on the outcome of investigations into 14 cases involving the use of social media and employers’ social media policies. The NLRB is an independent agency in the U.S. government that protects employees’ rights to join together to improve wages and working conditions, with or without a union.

Here’s an overview of the report and some pointers on what your company should consider when it comes to social media policy development.

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Why Is This Report Important?

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Eric B. Meyer, a partner in the labor and employment group of the law firm Dilworth Paxson LLP, explains the report’s significance. “It provides a window into what the NLRB considers legal and illegal, not only with respect to employers who discipline employees based solely on social media content that employees publish, but also as to social media policies that employers implement.”

So the report isn’t exactly the law. But it is one of the first detailed explanations about how existing laws are applied to social media policies and practices at work. It gives specific examples of policies, statements and conduct that is and isn’t OK.

Heather Bussing, an independent employment attorney, outlines the advantage the NLRB report provides. “The law is statutes and published decisions by the courts. Agency decisions and regulations are also considered law as long as they’re consistent with the statutes and court decisions. An agency report explaining its thinking and how it has applied statutes and cases to specific situations is about as close to ‘the law’ as you can get. So having a bunch of examples issued lets us have a better picture of what will and won’t get us in trouble, and that is probably even more useful than the law.”

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Defining Media and Social Media

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One of the interesting aspects of the report is the mention of “employers’ social and general media policies.” Mark Neuberger, with Foley & Lardner LLP, a global law firm representing management in all aspects of labor and employment law, believes the report might suggest they are the same for the purposes of policy development. “The NLRB is concerned with protecting an employee’s right to engage in protected concerted activity, regardless of the medium in which that right is expressed. Before social media, Board case law dealt with expression in verbal speech, written speech and even symbolic speech — the use of inflatable rats being just one example of expressive speech.”

Bussing breaks down for us the definition of “protected concerted activity” and why we need to pay attention to it:

“Criticism of an employer’s practices about wages, hours and working conditions is protected no matter how it is expressed as long as it is ‘protected, concerted activity.’ ‘Protected’ is any statement about wages, hours or working conditions. ‘Concerted’ means the employee’s statements were ‘engaged in with or on the authority of other employees.’ So the statement has to be about working conditions — it can’t be a personal attack that is ‘so disloyal, reckless or maliciously untrue’ that it loses protected status. The statement also has to be directed to other employees or to the company on behalf of the employees — not just personal gripes, honking or wailing. But it doesn’t matter where or how the employee makes the statement if it is also ‘protected’ and ‘concerted.’”

And nowadays, that “where” includes Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others. Bussing notes, “The report focuses both on where, how and to whom the statements were made. It also explains the limits of the protections — offensive and critical statements that are personal attacks rather than criticism of the wages, hours or working conditions are generally not protected.”

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For Businesses With No Policy

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Even if you don’t have a defined social media policy, this report might still have an effect on your decisions. Meyer says, “Regardless of whether you have a policy, the NLRB takes the position that — except in very limited circumstances — you can’t discipline employees who discuss workplace responsibilities and performance together online, even if the online conversation includes swearing, sarcasm or insults.

On the bright side, Bussing adds, “At least you won’t get in trouble for your policy. But before you fire someone for being a complete jerk, think about whether the employee was being critical of wages, hours or working conditions and was communicating to or for other employees.”

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For Businesses With a Policy

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For organizations with a policy currently in place, Bussing suggests that you “make sure it does not try to control what the employees can say and cannot say about the company. If it does, you can be in trouble with the NLRB.” She also mentions this could be the sign of other issues within the organization.

Meyer adds, “The NLRB does not believe that employers can generally prohibit employees from discussing the company, its employees or competitors — even if the comments are disparaging.”

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Don’t Make Your Policy Too Broad

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Another noteworthy aspect of the report is that the NLRB stated in five cases that the company’s social media policy was found to be “too broad” and therefore, unlawful. Bussing explains what could be described as “too broad” when it comes to policy: “’Too broad’ is generally translated from legalese to English as: ‘It covers so many things that it’s impossible to understand what the heck it means.’” When a court or enforcement agency says a policy is ‘too broad,’ that means it’s invalid, unenforceable and basically worthless. So all those well-intended protections are down the drain. And it’s worse than having no policy at all, since you could have a National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) violation because of the policy.

A no-brainer example of a policy that violated the NLRA was the blogging policy that prohibited employees from “making disparaging remarks about the company or its supervisors” and from talking about the company “in any media without the company’s permission.”

But another policy that violated the NLRA was one that prohibited employees from saying anything on social media that would ‘violate, compromise or disregard the rights and reasonable expectations as to privacy or confidentiality of any person or entity.” While this was probably intended to protect trade secrets and confidential medical or financial information, a tweet complaining about your cubemate’s smelly burrito (or its foreseeable consequences) could violate this policy.”

Meyer suggests, “To avoid this problem, an employer should carefully tailor his social media policy to serve a legitimate business interest which, at the same time, is not intended to interfere with the employees’ right to form a union or engage in other protected concerted activity.”

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A Caution About Monitoring

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Speaking of unions, Neuberger offers an additional observation about monitoring activity. “First, under the NLRA, employers are prohibited from engaging in ‘surveillance’ or monitoring employees in exercise of their right to form and join a union.” If an employer monitors social networking sites to determine who the union sympathizers and organizers are, they have engaged in an unfair labor practice. “The second is that when employers discipline or discharge for violations of a computer usage or social media policy, they can expect the employee to claim discriminatory enforcement. The problem employers face in defending such claims is that misuse of the computers and Internet is so prevalent in all workplaces that the employee stands a good chance of showing the employer ‘knew or should have known’ that there were other, more egregious violations of policy that were overlooked by the company.”

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Conclusion

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The National Labor Relations Board report isn’t designed to scare anyone. In fact, just the opposite. It’s been released to offer insights into and guidance for workplace social media. This will help to develop policies and use social media in a responsible way as we move forward and social media goes more mainstream.

It also means that like many of the guidelines and policies we have around the workplace, we must clearly define our expectations, communicate with and train our employees and hold people accountable.

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More Small Business Resources From OPEN Forum:

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- 15 Keyboard Shortcuts To Enhance Your PC Productivity

- 5 Services For Building Websites On A Budget

- 10 Accessories To Boost Office Morale

- Top 5 Foursquare Mistakes Committed By Small Businesses

- How To Use Social Media For Recruiting

Google has unveiled Google Movies for Android, a new app that allows users to rent and play movies on their tablets or phones.

The news is an extension of Monday’s announcement that YouTube is offering 3,000 additional movies for its on-demand rental service. Google revealed that it struck deals with Sony Pictures, NBC Universal and Warner Brothers for the rights to their movies.

That vast movie library has now made its way to Android. Movie rentals will start at $1.99 and be available directly from the Android Market. Once users rent a movie, they have 30 days to start watching the film and get 24 hours to watch it once it starts. The films can either be streamed or temporarily downloaded to Android phones so they can be watched offline.

The rental service will become available later today for all Android devices.

1. He bootstrapped himself. A scrawny little kid at 15, he decided to change who he was and how he was perceived, and then he did. The deciding was as important as the doing.
2. He went to the edges. He didn’t merely open a small gym, a more pleasant version of a boxing gym, for instance. Instead, he created the entire idea of a health club, including the juice bar. He did this 70 years ago.
3. He started small. No venture money, no big media partners.
4. He understood the power of the media. If it weren’t for TV, we never would have heard of Jack. Jack used access to the media to earn trust and to teach. And most of what Jack had to offer he offered for free. He understood the value of attention.
5. He was willing to avoid prime time. Jack never had a variety show on CBS. He was able to change the culture from the fringes of TV.
6. He owned the rights. 3,000 shows worth.
7. He stuck with the brand. He didn’t worry about it getting stale or having to reinvent it into something fresh. Jack stood for something, which is rare, and he was smart enough to keep standing for it.
8. Jack lived the story. He followed his own regimen, even when no one was watching. In his words, “I can’t die, it would ruin my image.”

He died last week at 96. I don’t think he has to worry about ruining his image, though.

When the last UK Parliament rushed the Digital Economy Act into law without debate, hours before it dissolved for the election, it appointed Ofcom, the telcoms regulator, to work out the details. Specifically, it charged Ofcom with sorting out some high standards for what evidence a rightsholder would have to produce in order to finger an online infringer (the DEA gives these rightsholders the power to eventually disconnect entire families from the internet on the strength of these accusations).

Now Ofcom has abrogated its duty to the public and announced that the record and film industry can “self-regulate” their evidence-gathering procedures; in other words, anything that the MPA or BPI say counts as proof that you’ve violated copyright goes. Since these are the same companies that have mistakenly accused dead people, inanimate objects (laser printers), and people who don’t own computers of file-sharing, this doesn’t bode well.

What’s more, it’s not legal. The Open Rights Group and Consumer Focus have pointed out that the Digital Economy Act instructs Ofcom to come up with standards, not throw its hands up in the air and give the entertainment industry bullies the power to act as judge, jury and executioner.

Ofcom’s proposal denies us the ability to check whether the methods of collecting of the evidence are trustworthy. Instead, copyright holders and Internet Service Providers will just self-certify that everything’s ok. If they get it wrong, there’s no penalty.

The Act requires the evidential standards to be defined – but Ofcom are leaving this up the rights holders and ISPs to decide in the future. We ask, how is anyone meant to trust this code if we can’t see how the evidence is gathered or checked?

After all, only last week, we heard about people have been apparently wrongly sent accusations of downloading tracks by the Ministry of Sound. We know things go wrong, and that’s why the Act requires the evidential standards to be set out. What we need now is a new consultation on a new code, that is compliant with the Act.

There’s something about an old video game that does a body good. The 16-color graphics, the 8-bit sound — something about it conjures memories of simpler times, when joysticks seemed larger because our hands were still small, and a dollar seemed like a heck of a lot more money than it does right now.

Allow us to take you on a vintage voyage with a time machine of links, if you will. Here are ten computer and arcade games we all know and love that you can now play online and free of charge. If you’re of a certain age, you probably played these games while waiting for your mom to finish grocery shopping. Or they might have been on your very first video game console. We hope you remember them fondly and enjoy playing them again.

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1. Donkey Kong

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The original Donkey Kong arcade game is the stuff of legends. A recent documentary about hardcore Kong players, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, follows a group of dudes who are all competing against one another for the Donkey Kong world record high score. It’s intense stuff. The game they played was the 1981 Nintendo release that features “Jumpman,” the tiny character dodging Kong’s barrels, who would later become, none other than the infamous man in red overalls, Mariomario.

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2. King’s Quest

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This 1984 classic was the first video game I ever played. It came on these wild contraptions called floppy disks. This prototypical adventure game required hours of fun using green-and-white-striped printer paper to map out the various screens of the game. The original King’s Quest spawned an entire series that followed the evolution of computer games over the years, culminating with King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity, which was released in 1998. Still, for my money, you can’t beat the original.

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3. Super Mario Bros.

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There wasn’t a kid on the block who didn’t go bananas over Super Mario Bros. when this game came out with the Nintendo Entertainment System console. We had been playing “regular” Mario Bros. in the arcades since 1983. Now Super Mario was packaged with the “regular” NES along with Duck Hunt in 1985. What made the Mario Bros. suddenly super was somewhat confusing for a 7-year-old, especially considering the Super Nintendo Entertainment System wasn’t released until the 1990s. Whatever, they were all super in my book.

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4. Asteroids

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Asteroids was released by Atari in 1979 as an arcade game and was later ported to the 2600, a seminal system that was launched in 1977. Last summer we heard that Universal Studios has secured the rights to make a movie out of the game. If you’ve ever played Asteroids, you know the plot might be a bit lacking for Hollywood. Still, the game was groundbreaking and addictive in its time, spawning a slew of knockoffs and sequels. We’re recommending you try this OG Asteroids clone, if only for the astounding and hilarious sound design.

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5. The Legend of Zelda

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Nintendo’s Zelda series is one of the greatest successes in video game history. To date, the Zelda games have sold more than 59 million copies worldwide. U.S. gamers originally got The Legend of Zelda as an NES cartridge game in 1987. One of the more interesting aspects of the game is that it combines elements of RPGs, puzzles, “exploration” games and action/battle games.

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6. Missile Command

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This 1980 Atari arcade shooter is a fan favorite and a true perennial. The concept is simple; the game lets players defend six cities from an infinite volley of ballistic missiles. It’s essentially a losing battle, as all the cities are eventually destroyed. Players simply rack up points as the speed increases. Missile Command was ported to the 2600 and remained immensely popular as an arcade game until the 1990s. In later years, the game also morphed into 3D and hi-def spinoffs as well.

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7. Pong

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Then there’s the granddaddy of them all, Pong. Pong was one of the first video games ever created, and almost forty years after its debut, it still charms us with its simplicity. Pong came out as a cabinet arcade game in 1972 and was ported as “Home Pong” in 1974 — this was a single-game console, mind you. The game was a huge success for maker Atari, who had to design a special chip just for the console. At the time, it was the highest-performing chip available in any consumer product.

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8. Centipede

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Centipede, Atari’s 1980 shooter, was a hugely successful arcade game and was also ported to the Atari 2600, 5600, and other Atari systems. It was followed in 1982 by the slightly less successful Millipede. It’s interesting to note that one of Centipede’s two designers was a woman, Dona Bailey, and the game was the first to grab a significant amount of female players.

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9. Duck Hunt

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Whether you were the kid who sat mere inches from the screen with Nintendo’s plastic “gun” controller or you preferred a more challenging approach, you know you loved Duck Hunt. The 1984 version of this game came bundled with Super Mario Bros. in the NES package. Previously, it had been a game for Nintendo’s Laser Clay Shooting System, a 1973 home entertainment product that predated Nintendo’s video game offerings.

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10. Pac-Man

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You can’t discuss vintage video games without mentioning Pac-Man. The Pac-Man brand is the single most recognizable name in the industry. When Pac-Man debuted in 1980, most of the arcade games out there were space-themed shooters or Pong-like sports games. Pac-Man was the first face, and the first real character in gaming. It also set the stage for “casual game” models that would appeal to both sexes.

Pac-Man gave way to a herd of sequels, clones and spin-offs, but none were more popular than Ms. Pac-Man, a 1981 version that some diehard Pac-Man fans even prefer over the original. The game was ported to the Atari 2600 with moderate success, but many folks still enjoy playing the arcade game. Word on the street is that a Japanese game manufacturer might be rolling out a touchscreen version of Pac-Man for the iPad soon.

While conducting research for this post, we also came across a rad SNES emulator, a clearinghouse of old arcade games online and this excellent Atari site, with games such as Lunar Lander, Yars’ Revenge and Gravitar.

What great games did we miss? Be sure to share them with us in the comments, along with a link to where we can play them online.

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[img credit: headexplodie, gray_um, gamerscore, lenore-m]