Students Sue Anti-Plagiarism Service 713
jazzbazzfazz writes "It seems that some students in Virginia are not happy with the anti-plagiarism service Turnitin. The company checks prose submitted by its customers for signs that it has been copied in whole or part by comparing it to a large database of works that it maintains. Trouble is, it also adds the submitted prose to its files and stores it for use by the company in future scans, which the students feel is illegal use of their copyrighted materials. I think they've got an excellent case, especially since they seem to have prepared for this eventuality: they're A-students, never been accused of plagiarism, and they formally copyrighted their papers prior to their submission to Turnitin."
Why woudn't they want their work cataloged (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about these students, but when I was in school nothing bothered me more than students asking to see my answers, cheat off my tests, or read my essays for 'inspiration'.
But then again, it is a violation all the same. I say if it bothers them, go for it the law is on their side.
New rules for incoming students (Score:3, Insightful)
New Student Application
The undersigned hereby agrees to allow AnyUniversity, henceforth known as "The Univeristy," its employees, officers, and agents, a non-exclusive, perpetual right to store or publish copies of all work submitted for course credit.
Formally copyrighted? (Score:2, Insightful)
-S
Re:Uh... no. (Score:5, Insightful)
I signed no contract in primary or secondary school that said my work is the property of the school, and copyright law has no provision that makes such a theory true. The closest thing that comes to mind is works for hire. And I don't think any copyright attorney would argue such an asinine position.
Re:Terms of Service (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First Post (Score:1, Insightful)
What college pays you to go there?
Re:Why woudn't they want their work cataloged (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why woudn't they want their work cataloged (Score:5, Insightful)
In essence, Turnitin is making a good deal of money by using other people's work. If those people want a cut of the proceeds, I don't see a problem with that.
Say what?! (Score:5, Insightful)
A "clear case" of fair use? It's copying the entire work, and it's doing it for commercial purposes. That's the worst possible result on two of the four criteria, before we even start on the others.
And how is this at all the same as Google's book search?
Re:Clear case of Fair Use (Score:5, Insightful)
And secondly, the company is making money using the content from the students.
How is any of that fair use?
Not to mention that these systems are used by people assuming that all students cheat, which is bad to begin with. So much for morale.
The door swings both ways... (Score:2, Insightful)
So I wonder if these same students consider the "cataloging" and sharing of copyrighted music just as infringing?
If it isn't infringing to share music via P2P, then why would it be infringing for school staff to share papers? Especially when in the latter case, they are doing it with the explicit purpose of preventing copying of the students work? Presumably, a student who finds his hard work copied by another student would have a copyright infringement case against the other student, provided that it was indeed copied without permission. After all, high school students would never stoop so low as to allow others to copy their work.
I'm thinking that more than a few of them have downloaded and shared music under the justification of "Maybe I'll buy it later... if I like it." But for some reason, it's only considered copyright infringement when it is their work being copied.
After all, if it isn't your work being copied, it's sharing, right?
Idiots (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Say what?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Google book search also copies the entire work, and does it for commercial (advertising) purposes.
I'm not sure why I had different initial opinions in the two cases (for Google but against Turnitin), but I have to admit the cases are pretty damn similar.
Re:Clear case of Fair Use (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly Google offers this as a free service. Although it has ads, there are also links to several book sellers which would allow the person who wrote the book and the publisher to get a sale from it. Turnitin is not a free service. They are directly profiting from the work of college students who do not and cannot see any monetary reward from their work being forcefully included in the turnitin database.
It doesn't sound the same at all to me.
Re:that system is pretty flawed. (Score:1, Insightful)
All the rough drafts were ran through the system.
Then later, the final drafts were ran through the system and came up with collisions.
Isn't that working as intended? Or was it a class of 500 and only 30 had hits? After all, it wouldn't be a shock that Alice wrote a paper that looked a lot like Alice's rough draft, and Bob wrote a paper that looked a lot like Bob's rough draft and so on.
I must be missing something!
Re:I predict (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody who's an English major presumably wants to be one because they enjoy writing (due to the "do you want fries with that?" job prospects). Therefore, they wouldn't want to cheat anyway. In contrast, the types of majors that people who care about money rather than the subject go into, like management, probably have a much higher incidence of cheating.
Probably not fair use. (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually wouldn't mind if it was covered under Fair Use, because I think that's something we could really do with broadening, but the law as written today wouldn't cover it.
Now, what I think will happen, is that Turnitin will advise its clients (schools, universities, etc.) that in order to use the service, they must obtain a release from students that includes permission to upload the files. This way, they'll just offload the responsibility for copyright infringement off on the schools, who will just force students to release their work, or refuse to give them a grade.
I don't think it'll be very long before, when you apply to a college or university, you also sign away all rights to everything you think, say, or do while you're there, in perpetuity, in any medium whatsoever. They'll just make it part of the admissions contract, and that will be it -- at least for private schools and colleges. I'm not sure what legal grounds you would get into with public schools, and whether they could force students to do that or not.
But I think the students in the Turnitin case, have just as much if not more grounds than the plaintiffs in the similar cases of book publishers vs. Google. (Actually, I think Google has a much better Fair Use defense than Turnitin does.)
Re:Uh... no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, all that's irrelevant because this case concerns public high schools, not universities.
Re:Going nowhere fast? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would really be interesting if all the published books on one particular subject (again, say, the Divine Comedy) were submitted to this service and a check was run about just how much 'plagiarizing' and 'original thinking' there is going around...
But the students didn't agree to this... (Score:3, Insightful)
...the professors did, prior to submitting the students' work for cross referencing. How does Turnitin get released when the people suing never consented, or even saw those usage terms?
What this might end up doing is having a similar type suit brought against the professors and/or University. When the first one gets burned at the stake, the other schools that are taking note will quickly enact policies that would allow them to do this as a condition of attending their institution.
Re:New rules for incoming students (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I predict (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Say what?! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Where is your homework ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Going nowhere fast? (Score:5, Insightful)
These students should be plenty happy. They get what they're "entitled" to out of their work: (good) grades. It's just greedy to be concerning yourself with the idea that some commercial entity which enables professors to MORE AFFORDABLY provide you your education (by way of spending less time simply checking for plagiarism) should be forking over some portion of their profits.
I know this'll be an unpopular viewpoint. Whatever side of copyright infringement a group of young student-types are on at the moment is the "right" one. My mistake.
When you hit grad-student levels and someone "steals" papers you'd otherwise publish, thereby depriving you of your livelihood, we'll talk. Otherwise hand in your damned homework, get your grades, pass you class, get your degree and go get a job.
Re:Why woudn't they want their work cataloged (Score:2, Insightful)
You're missing the point.
I write the paper. Copyright belongs to me. I give the paper to my teacher. Teacher now has the physical paper, but not copyright. Copyright still belongs to me. Teacher then makes a copy and gives that copy to Turnitin. That is infringement. Turnitin now uses that infringing copy to make money. That can be criminal copyright infringement (in the US).
If the teacher gave the physical paper to Turnitin, you might have a case.
Re:I predict (Score:5, Insightful)
She doesn't use any special software or tools though, it's almost always obvious, such as when a student suddenly starts spelling words correctly they have never spelled right all semester, or using coherent sentence structures, etc, and usually googling a few snippets of the questionable paper turns up the plagiarized sources. (Yes, people just copy/paste from wikipedia and other sources without citing it and try to turn it in as their own.)
So, basically, this tool kind of sounds like it's more for professors that are too lazy, unobservant, or overworked to actually recognize their own students writing after a whole semester. And I guess for busting the genuinely clever plagiarists who are buying papers all semester long that they know haven't been published elsewhere online.
Re:Probably not fair use. (Score:5, Insightful)
unless submitted through Turn-it-In which provides ample disclaimers.
Students should be complaining to the school district for forcing them
to give up rights to their paper. However, this is unlikely to succeed.
At the University, only faculty own their research. Students and employees
get no rights. Even student thesis papers belong to the University, not
the student.
Re:Uh... no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, university disciplinary boards aren't known for their attention to fairness and justice, so I'm not surprised.
Re:It's a civil case, so you need damages, so... (Score:5, Insightful)
The market need not be plagiarists, it could just as easily be the market for competing plagiarism detection services.
Re:Idiots (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why woudn't they want their work cataloged (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't trust privacy policies. There's no laws that can be enforced if the company in question violates their own policy, and it's ridiculously hard to prove it even if they did. And, as you can see here, most privacy policies have a not-difficult-to-imagine scenario which would involve complete loss of control of the private information you did provide. I'd like to see more work done on making companies stick to their privacy policies, and large fines or jail time if they don't.
Re:Probably not fair use. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree...The courts have ruled in several different cases (not a legal scholar so unable to site the specific cases) that copying of an original work (article, essay, book, etc...), or even a critical portion thereof (as demonstrated with Gerald Ford's book concerning the Nixon Pardon), exactly as it was presented in the original work, even for purposes of subsequent commentary, still constitutes infringement of copyright and is not protected under fair use. In addition, due to the efforts of the RIAA over the years, it does not matter if one intends to "redistribute" the work or not (i.e. a copy made to share with your friends for free or even one made for personal use, as in the mixed tape for example), it is *still* copyright infringement. It should be noted that the courts have left it purposefully ambiguous so that each case is decided separately by a judge, but the precedents are strongly against Turnitin for maintaining whole copies of student papers, if indeed that is what they do (cryptographic hashing may be an interesting question if that is also going on), in their database and it doesn't matter if they show those papers to anyone or not, the very fact that there are copies in the database is enough to trigger copyright.
a for-profit service, who is obviously deriving some economic benefit by using somebody else's copyrighted paper (by adding it to their database) is probably not going to qualify.
Absolutely...this only adds to the prejudice that any reasonable judge would have against their fair use defense, especially in light of the reasons stated above.
I actually wouldn't mind if it was covered under Fair Use, because I think that's something we could really do with broadening, but the law as written today wouldn't cover it.
Perhaps the RIAA will actually write a "friend of the court" brief in support of the students to prevent that from happening (they wouldn't want that type of fair use precedent established in the common law). They say that litigation often makes for some strange bedfellows after all.
Now, what I think will happen, is that Turnitin will advise its clients (schools, universities, etc.) that in order to use the service, they must obtain a release from students that includes permission to upload the files. This way, they'll just offload the responsibility for copyright infringement off on the schools, who will just force students to release their work, or refuse to give them a grade.
I am not sure if the students can be compelled to do that since it could be argued that they entered into the contract under duress of not getting a grade and thus a degree. Even if this is effective, it would only prevent future claims, but the ones currently working their way through the system would still be valid and thanks to the RIAA the price per infringement is quite high, on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars per infringement which could make for a fairly spectacular judgment or at least a hefty settlement (bye bye student loans).
I don't think it'll be very long before, when you apply to a college or university, you also sign away all rights to everything you think, say, or do while you're there, in perpetuity, in any medium whatsoever.
Contract law is not omnipotent, if they make the contract overly broad then the contract can be dissolved by the courts or at the very least, assuming the contract is well written, the offending parts could be severed from the agreement (the court decides which language is struck) and dissolved while leaving the remainder of the contract, if anything does remain, intact.
But I think the students in the Turnitin case, have just as much if not more grounds than the plaintiffs in the similar cases of book publishers vs. Google. (Actually, I think Google has a much better Fair Use defense than Turnitin does.)
The students do indeed have a stron
Re:Normalize. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I missed something, but I thought we were trying to teach our children something positive. Do we really want to raise our kids to be even more confrontational, aggressive, mean spirited and anti-social? I would say no.
As an aside to this, I went to a polytechnic that involved a large number of randomly assigned group projects. Basically this threw the successful and underachievers into the same bucket. This whole exercise was basically meant to neutralize a self performance based metric into a group based success role. Teams that did well with each-other would always do better than mavericks, no matter how talented they were. The team working really gave a reflective picture of how you deal with people after those years of school are long over with. You have some who slack off and bring the group down. You have others that push hard to get their work done. Now the onus was on group members to either lift or tear apart each other.
And isn't that whats really important? We plagiarize through life, most of the time we never even think of the backs we're standing on. I would rather deal with solving the problem in a more creative way (like heavy group projects) instead of using technological means to force you to succeed. Some people will never 'succeed' in the way that society places on them. Are they worthless? If so, then we're not making very good use of our resources now, are we?
I you just can't implement something like the above and plagiarism is 'rampant', I see nothing wrong with an anti-plagiarism system as long as there are processes to deal with false positives and that everyone involved knows that it exists.
Re:Probably not fair use. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uh... no. (Score:3, Insightful)
Two papers I wrote as a phd student are now behind pay for access portals, where they charge $30 for a single copy, or a subscription.
Do I get a penny of this? Nope, and do I get free access as the Author? Nope.
Nor are you entitled to that, regardless of whether you hold the copyright. The copyright only applies to the text, tables, and figures you submitted, not the typeset and printed pages that the journal produces. Authors of books and magazine articles often retain the copyrights to their works, but many of them don't get free copies of their books or articles. That said, many academic journals provide authors with a certain number of reprints. Apparently not the one you were published in....
Did they ask for my permission? Nope.
Sure they did, and you granted it when you agreed to let them publish it. You did give them permission to publish it, didn't you? If you wanted to get paid for it, you should have submitted it to a publication that pays its authors. Academic publications generally don't do that, though, and I suspect you knew that when you chose to publish there. Presumably, the value you received from publishing without compensation was greater than the value you would have received from publishing elsewhere or not publishing at all -- otherwise, why did you let them publish it?
Its the standard way papers are distributed in the academic world. I think it's unfair as it stands, although I recognise they have some need to recoup their storage/indexing costs.
Why is it unfair? Academic journals have a small audience interested in reading their publications and ethical considerations that prohibit them from accepting advertising. Furthermore, they have an enormous pool of authors who are willing to provide them content without compensation (because for those authors, publishing is a means to an end, not a living unto itself). They have absolutely no incentive to pay you or give you anything for free, and a rather large disincentive to do so. I happen to think there are a lot of things wrong with academic publishing, but this is not one of them. The more they have to give to their authors, the fewer papers they can afford to publish and the harder it will be to get published. If your graduation is delayed because you're having a hard time getting published, that's going to cost you a whole lot more than you would ever get in compensation for your paper.
As for the true scope of the permissions you granted them, if they published your article then I'm certain you and/or your co-author(s) signed something granting them permission to do so (or otherwise provided legally binding consent). If not, they had no right to publish the article in the first place. I also suspect that if you read the fine print wherever your consent is recorded that you granted them all rights to the article, as academic journals typically require. That means that not only did you give them permission to publish the article, but you also assigned the copyright on the article to the publisher. That means they can do with it as they wish, including publishing it elsewhere without your permission. It also means that if you ever want to re-publish the article elsewhere (even your own dissertation), you need to ask the original publisher for permission even though you are the author. Don't like it? Don't assign them all rights. Sure, that means they probably won't publish it, but when they've got 10 other people willing to take your place in the journal why should they care?
By the way, it's not just academic authors who have to deal with this -- there are a fair number of mainstream publications that will only buy all rights. Of course, they buy them, meaning the authors are monetarily compensated, but then they're dealing with professional writers and attempting to attract an entirely different sort of author than academic journals are. Magazines with high-quality articles, of course, tend to pay well and agree to buy one-time publication rights only because that's what attracts the best writers, but the academic market is a completely different story.
Re:Probably not fair use. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Horrible system (Score:1, Insightful)
What is this thing of which you speak, "rough draft"? Back when papers were written on typewriters, there were discrete drafts that were marked up with a red marker, corrected and re-typed. But how do you divide the hundred thousand edits to a Word document into drafts? Is the difference between one draft and the next just that you decided to change one punctuation mark, or change a header's font size?
Re:Sue the pants off them!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The student pays to go to school, not the other way around. Students hire teachers to teach them. I don't see how turning in a paper becomes "work for hire".
Re:I predict (Score:3, Insightful)
While I generally agree with what you wrote, I think you either misspoke or have a misunderstanding of copyright.
Facts can't be copyrighted. For my citation, see any commonly accepted explanation of copyright ever written. Given that, I have no idea how you can conclude that it's illegal to take a fact without citing it.
Maybe you're not talking about copyright, but rather common courtesy and the standards of research that most professions self-police themselves with? If so, it's got nothing to do with law.
Re:Probably not fair use. (Score:5, Insightful)
The point isn't about whether it subverts the educational process or not (I would agree with you that in this particular case, the students (the ones that don't cheat) have nothing to benefit from by shutting down turnitin), it's about how you apply copyrights. If a government implements a copyright system it should work for everyone, not just RIAA and the corporations. This means that the same rules apply to "pot-smoking communist students" as they do our corporate overlords.
If you are willing to make the benefits of copyright applicable only to one set of people/organizations, then there is nothing morally wrong with pillaging the seas for mp3s.
Your statement about value is even more stupid. I could argue that Britney Spears' shit (that corporations try to present as music) has no inherent value and it no way satisfies the requirement that copyrights were created for. To function (both in a legal and moral sense) copyrights have to be universal, it doesn't matter if I write a poem about how great pot is or compose a piece of music that changes the world, both these products have the exact same rights when it comes to getting copyrights.
If anything, you're just underlining how artificial and pointless copyrights (especially in their current form and with the development of digital technologies) are. They are not real, like corporations they are an artificial construct that were initiated in hope that it would benefit society overall.
You statements about inspiration from discussions is also lame. You would not be able to copyright the vast majority of mainstream music. After all, most of "gangsta rap" is represented by identical carbon copies. Add "bitches/bentlies" to the videos and "cash, money" and " Ima G" lyrics. What about the black cop/white cop formula used by many cop movies?
Copyright is not sustainable in it's current form and the fact that there is an issue around turnitin underlines this fact.
Re:Terms of Service (Score:4, Insightful)
By "general principle" I think you mean someone in a university legal department made this up. Since there is no student salary, this is clearly not a work done for hire. So show me a legally enforceable document that students sign which actually transfers this ownership.
Re:Terms of Service (Score:5, Insightful)
Um no. Not without a signed legal document.
No.
Glad you don't agree, but it IS unreasonable. Imagine a "writer" teaching a literature class and snaging ideas from a few good students papers. Is that right? Aside from this potential abuse, is there ANY legitimate reason to require a student to assign copyright to the school? Just remember that the school doesn't have a place where they archive all these exciting papers they get. The prof normally grades then and gives them back.
Back to Bullshit again. No one is paying the student. In fact, the student is paying for an education.
Re:Terms of Service (Score:1, Insightful)
Except for, you know, actually being paid to do the work.
Re:I predict (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Probably not fair use. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Going nowhere fast? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not going to bother kludging together something for the second sentance.
Suffice it to say that your argument is based on a premise along the lines of "it's not like you were using those rights anyways." Personally, I find that argument fallacious and take offense when people use it.
What if every student submitted every paper they wrote to the Copyright Office?
Would you also tell them to stfu and gbtw?
Re:Say what?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Probably not fair use. (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems pretty cut and dry to me: They didn't ask for a license, I did not grant them a license, thus they are infringing.
Re:I predict (Score:2, Insightful)
(For the record, I took Computer Science at McGill. It's a good program. Cheating was rampant)
Re:I predict (Score:3, Insightful)
That isn't my experience at all. My experience is that my grades on papers had little relation to the quality of the paper and a great deal of relation to whether or not what I wrote was what the professor wanted to hear. There were professors who had an unspoken list of criteria for a paper and you could have the most well-thought, insightful, creative, and firmly cited paper and it wouldn't matter. Only the criteria.
In other cases I have seen brilliant papers thrashed for minor spelling and grammar errors. I am talking about papers submitted in Science and Philosophy courses not English and Literature related courses.
My favorite are the Republican and Christian professors who give poor grades on papers that challenge their Christian teachings, the importance of Christian philosophy, etc.
I am a very stubborn and uncompromising individual. When I encountered professors who exhibited these behaviors I'd just drop the class (warning, that isn't cheap especially if you don't catch on to the problem early) and take the same course under a different professor. Miraculously dodging these bunk academics left me with a 4.0 on a 4.0 scale.
The only good thing I've heard all day. (Score:2, Insightful)
This is very interesting -- I've always thought that this should be how it works, but I wasn't clear whether Government-funded research went into the public domain or what. It certainly seems like nothing but a big fat handout to the journal publishers, if billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded research are just turned over to them by scientists trying to get their papers in print.
Re:Probably not fair use. (Score:4, Insightful)
At the University of California, the same applies. A work is not the property of the University unless they sponsor, commission, or contract it: http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/coordrev/policy/8-19- 92att.html [ucop.edu] .
And just to riff off of the general subject, I think it's absurd to demand that students' papers be put in some company's database. Colleges and corporations alike have not hereto proven the most responsible or effective guardians of people's valuable personal information. These policies also take a stance which tacitly assumes that students are cheaters. And just like any good witch hunt, if you have a problem with it, people start wondering what you have to hide.
Ah, ideal world utopias... how cute (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me tell you about those group assignments: _no_ university, college, or polytechnic _ever_ had assignments complex enough and under enough time pressure to actually _require_ cooperation. They're simple stuff doable by average students, who've been given 20x the necessary time for either to do it on his own. A really good student tends to plough through that assignment in an afternoon or two... and usually ends up having to.
What really happens in those groups is that you end up teamed with various clones of Wally (from the Dilbert comics), who can't be arsed to do _anything_ for the project.
E.g., take it from experience, in the first year in college I ended up having pretty much my own sidekick, sorta like Batman and Robin. His claim to glory was looking over my shoulder when I was at a computer in the lab. Now I don't think I was some kind of genius, but somehow I ended up with some "the great Moraelin" kinda reputation pretty fast. This guy ended up being "the great Wally" because he was with me all the time, so people _assumed_ some kind of teamwork was involved. It looked like pair programming, I guess, although that guy never actually offered any actual advice or information or ever coded anything for that matter.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a nerd, so I'll take any kind of popularity or friend, if it's available. I didn't mind having my own fan following around.
By the time we get our first group assignment, it seemed only natural to pair him with me. After all, everyone could swear that we're already such a great team. Let me tell you, the guy did _nothing_. Admittedly, I did do a stunt and come up with a far more grandiose idea than the professor wanted to give our team. (Hey, I must keep that "the great Moraelin" reputation.) But I asked him to do only some small trivial parts of it, merely token so I can say with a straight face that he did something too. To get an idea, by the end I had reduced it to asking him to write a function that draws two perpendicular lines on the screen. _That_ trivial. He didn't even do that. In fact other than reassuring me that he's working on it and almost ready, he didn't do anything at all. I ended up writing it all by myself.
The same theme repeated throughout college, even if with different people. I still wonder what had happened to my first sidekick. I think he wasn't around any more by the next year. No problem, I got other sidekicks. I even had a sorta girlfriend based on just doing her assignments too. She never even saw the program when we were teamed for such a group assignment, until we presented it to the professor. Wasn't interested in seeing it either. (And tbh, it didn't bother me much:) Smart girl otherwise, mind you, but, you know, why bother working when someone else can do all your assignments?
Getting teamed with another guy on another occasion, well, got me another guy pretending to be my best friend. He did at least paint about two pages of flowcharts after the fact, though, before getting bored with that too. In the meantime the "girlfriend" had been teamed up with someone else, but, hey, I got to do their work too, although I wasn't on their team.
So basically, please spare me the bull about learning to function in a team. I've yet to see even one team in college which actually worked as a team. Invariably it was one "maverick" doing all the work, and a bunch of Wallys doing little more than moral support, if even that.
Well, ok, so it may be a useful lesson for later. I was reading a study that said that about 3 out of 4 programmers can't actually program, or don't program, and just find some way or another to live as parasites off others. Ranging from "oh, you're my best friend, please help me", to taking all credit and trying to discredit the real worker to the boss, to being the boss's personal pet, to God knows what other creative ways. Yeah, you can get used to that kind of people in those group assignments, but that's about it.
But even that's not as useful as you may think. Yeah, it taught some of us geeks to be "good team players", meaning: to not mind a Wally just hanging around and taking credit. But it also taught whole generations of Wallys that that's one way to get the job done.