What's yours is yours
Okay, so I’m a NASCAR fan, right? Big time. I remember when I was 10 years old and I was watching when Dale Earnhardt hit the wall and died. Man, I thought my dad’s brother had died from the way my dad was acting, and I felt like it too. He was a big deal. So the natural thing was for me to be a Dale Jr. fan, of course. Kind of like keeping a family tradition or something. 88. That’s me.

Anyway this racing love is one of those things I do a lot in school. Whenever a teacher gives us the chance to choose our topic—like for a research paper or something, I always do racing. And usually Dale Jr. It’s fun that way, cuz then I get to find out some more interesting stuff about the things I like and it makes the time in school go by faster. One time a teacher made us pick our research topic from something dumb, animals I think, and I just ignored her and did NASCAR anyway. She didn’t like it but she still let me do it because she didn’t find out until it was too late. That was kind of funny, I thought.

So last year in senior English class we had to do this presentation as a final project. I naturally picked Dale Jr. and titled The New Legacy: 88. It was awesome. I used a program the teacher told us about to put pictures and a video into a fancy slideshow and then I put music with it. It had to tell a story, so I grabbed a bunch of videos to tell the story about Dale Jr.’s rise after the Intimidator died. I began with the crash (#3 on the wall), then had Jr. running over to his dad's car, and then the ambulance driving away. That was like the exposition and hook all in one, and then I faded to black and had a moment of silence before jumping into some of Jr.'s success after '01. I had a lot from 2004 when he won 6 races. It was cool cuz I found some sweet videos and photos of everything I could find and then matched the speed of the transitions and action with the music I chose. The song was Trace Adkins Rough and Ready. Dale had been in the video of that song and it was fast so it looked really cool with all the pictures snapping by. I didn’t put in too many words for the video, just a number every time I showed him in victory lane. That was like the rising action, I thought. And then the number six was the climax.
You can tell I thought I did a sweet job on the project since I even remember how I matched it all with that plot stuff. I finished it off and then my friend told me I should put it on YouTube to show it off. I hadn't put anything on YouTube before but I thought I'd like to share it with my friends who weren't in my class, so I got on and put it there. I got some great compliments, people liked it a lot.

Then it got bad. I turned it in and my teacher told me I did a nice job but that I hadn't given credit for using any of the videos or pictures or stuff. I was like, credit? I thought we were just supposed to tell a story? She pointed to some line in the handout that talked about giving credit and avoiding plagiarism and said since I was a senior I should have known better. She took off a bunch of points for it and I was so ticked I didn't even talk to her. I just left before I'd say something bad. Then the next week my video on YouTube started getting pounded with complaints. At first it was just some random guy, but then it was a ton of people. They were saying stuff like "This material is not yours. These videos are NASCAR property" and they were complaining about the music too. I didn't get what their problem was. I mean, did they watch the movie? It was awesome! Then they took it off YouTube. I was ticked but by that time I'd pretty much given up cuz so many people were complaining about it.

I guess my teacher felt kind of bad about it though because the next week she talked to me about it. She said she heard me talking about what happened to my video on YouTube wanted me to know it was kind of the same thing that she'd taken points away for. I didn't say much back but she said its different when you show a video to a few people in a classroom and post a video on the internet. I guess when you post it on the internet its like putting it on TV or something. You have to pay for it or have permission from the people who made the song or the pictures.

It's kind of the same thing as the music sharing but a bit different because its not just on your computer its published on the internet. She said some people give permission to use their stuff, but you have to go to different places than I did to find it.

Don't believe it? See for yourself: