Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

Switching component to upload wizard - I'm assuming its their problem (and/or they're figure out who to ask)

I'm not an expert in German law. I don't acknowledge that this is even a bug unless I hear from a lawyer.

Also, it seems to me, on the face of it, that the responsibility lies with the uploader. If they are required to rename the file (for technical reasons) while preserving the title (to be fair to the author) they will have to figure that out themselves.

In any case we can always fix this after the fact by moving the file.

I am not a lawyer, and I am suggesting to ask one, too. If you don't ask,
you'll probably never hear from one. The German WMF chapter has the
appropriate contacts, so please forward this question to one of them.

By the way: Dumping responsibilities to uploaders is one of the things that
probably most often wouldn't work. I know dozens of people who would upload
if they weren't afraid of it, and if they only understood that it is not
illegal, if they were able to find the right licenses, etc.. Most cannot,
and say, this is something for experts, not for me. Many cannot even make
a distinction between upload and download ("I do not move images or audio
or video over the internet because that is illegal and I shall be punished,
if I do. The papers are full of it!")

We loose many potential uploaders because of their inability to deal with
licensing stuff and other legel issues, and we are being percieved as
arrogant when we want them to make decisions they simply cannot.

So let us clear the questions and inform uploaders in smiple words and
as reliably as we can.

I believe you are in the wrong place to debate this. As I understand it, Bugzilla is for identifiable, technical flaws with our software. Even if sometimes people debate such things here, this is the wrong forum.

Now, even if you were right, I don't agree that any action is required.

Our software, unfortunately, conflates heading, title, URL, filename, and unique ID, all into one identifier, which I will call the "MediaWiki Title". Sometimes we have to do various things to the title to make it all work. For instance, consider the famous "Migrant Mother" image. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_Mother). On Commons, it has the MediaWiki title "File:Lange-MigrantMother02.jpg".

There has never been any suggestion on Commons or any other Wikimedia site that the "MediaWiki Title" is the title that the author gave to the work, nor are we asserting that others should refer to the work in that way. This is just an identifier for software primarily, and humans secondarily. And in this case, "Migrant Mother" is not even the real title of the work, it's just the commonly known name. The official title is "Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California."

Finally all works within Wikimedia Commons have to be licensed in such a way as to allow for derivative works, which would explicitly include retitling the work. If you believe that certain individual Wikipedias should still change their policies about their fair-use images, perhaps you should take it up with them.

Finally, I think we can rely on people's common sense here. If the work is a recognized artwork with a recognized title, people will try to make the "MediaWiki title" related to the commonly known title.

Please do not try to be creative or present opinions. What you write is nice, understandable, but completely irrelevant. German court rules are anti-common-sense quite often, especially in copyright and competiton related issues. Odds are that (nontechnical, internet illiterate) German judges decide a (MediaWiki page) title *is* a (work) title, then we are bound to that. Only a specialized German lawyer would be able to give a qualified estimate as to how likely this is, and how we can possibly avoid it from happening, e.g. by wording messages appropriately.

The German WMF chapter has contact to ones, so please ask experts, that's why we have them.

Disallowing renames seems insane..., but can't we just ask the wmf legal person (whomever that may be) and be done with it?

I'll repeat what I said before: I believe you are in the wrong place to debate this. Bugzilla is not for "I command you to figure out a complicated legal question". Bugzilla is for "I *know* there is a problem, and it's with an identifiable part of the software that a programmer can fix".

And in any case, if this is a real problem, it's vastly bigger than just the UploadWizard extension.

Purodha, unless you are a lawyer, then I agree, neither of us know what is to be done. I am based in the USA right now and don't have any special access to German legal experts, no more than you do. I suggest you take the initiative with WMDE in figuring out if this is a problem or not. WMDE is not a "part" of the WMF, they are their own thing. 

If you think it's something the American WMF general counsel should look into, then you can email Geoff Brigham -- gbrigham at wikimedia.org.

I had already e-mailed a pointer to this bug to WMF-DE but I've only a general info e-mail address. There is hope that someone forwards the info the the rights department. If there is no feedback in a reasonable time, I can try to access WMF-DE people who I know.

Generally, I think, also legalese bugs are bugs in the software and need fixing. I admit, we do not have an appropriate section in bugzilla for them. Thanks god, they're rare!