2011/5/9 Maarten Dammers <maarten(a)mdammers.nl>nl>: Hi Maarten, As it happens, I found out about Wiki Loves Monuments while looking for subjects for a free image competition I recently imagined to provide more free images from Romania. Since an European competition would be (I hope) an additional selling point, I thought we might become part of it. The "organizing comitee" for this contest exists, however, since we don't a have a chapter, we are partnering with another NGO which advocates the use of FLOSS to attract sponsors and partners (that is, we were thinking of positioning the contest as a "free image competition", not a "wiki image competition"). Before I go any further, I just wanna make sure that neither me nor the NGO will get in any trademark-related issues with the WMF. As far as I could see, the Wiki(m|p)edia trademarks are not used, so we should be safe, but I wanted a confirmation on that. I'm thinking about organizing the contest in Romania. The period we had initially planned was august-september, so it roughly matches your timeline. I'll talk with the rest of the people involved and we'll decide by the end of the week if we can match your timeline :) Thanks for your response, Strainu

Hi guys, I'm happy to announce you that we decided to enter our contest in WLM. We obtained the support of Prolinux [1], an NGO which started as a LUG[2], but was since then involved in many different actions designed to promote open software and open content. I would also like to introduce Nicu Buculei [3] (CC'd), my partner for this contest. He is a photographer and a Fedora contributor and has made several valuable image contributions to commons, as well as ro.wp, in the past. During the weekend I will update the wiki pages with the relevant information and we'll make out a catch-up plan to see how soon we can fit in the European schedule. I will also start promoting the contest on ro.wp, to see if we can recrute more people for the job at hand. However, I still have some outstanding issues: - Romania does not have a freedom of panorama law, which means that some monuments will not be eligible for ditribution under a free license. How did other countries in the same situation handled this? - Lodewijk, you said that we'll probably need to use the WMF trademarks. Could you be more precise on what part of the contest are you referring to? Also, if you could put us in contact with the WMF, we would be most grateful. - regarding the Cultural Heritage Organization in Romania, I know about CIMEC [4], and I also found a contact person on the European Heritage Days page [5]. Again, any help on this side would be much appreciated Strainu [1] http://www.prolinux.ro [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_User_Group [3] http://www.nicubunu.ro , User:Nicubunu [4] http://www.cimec.ro [5] http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/heritage/ehd/partners_en.asp#RO 2011/5/9 Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>rg>:

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 9:27 AM, Strainu <strainu10(a)gmail.com> wrote: I guess you need to make a list of monuments of which you're certain that they're out of copyright, where the architect has been dead for more than 70 years. If i remember correctly this is also how France handles it. -- Hay

Hi Strainu, thanks a lot for your mail, it sounds great that you are participating, and the news was received well during our meeting in Berlin (by coincidence, we had a WLM meeting in Berlin this weekend). Welcome Nicu to this mailing list! Partnering with an existing Open Source group might indeed be a good idea to handle some of the more practical stuff. Am 13. Mai 2011 11:20:08 UTC+2 schrieb Strainu <strainu10(a)gmail.com>om>: Unfortunately more countries are having this problem. Basically the lack of Freedom of Panorama means that participants will not be able to submit images of buildings which are still within copyright. This means you have to create the list of all monuments, and find a way to figure out which are and which are not in copyright. I am not even close to an expert on Romanian copyright law, so this is something you should be working on probably. If there is a way we can help, please let us know. If this information is in the lists, we can tell participants they can only submit photos of a certain subcategory of the monuments - the PD ones. I will contact the Wikimedia Foundation and ask what is the most practical approach here. I know that there is at least one more country without chapter that is considering to participate, so we might encounter this another time. You would need this trademark mainly to be able to tell people that they are participating this contest to help Wikipedia - strictly speaking this would not be necessary, but our experience is that it increases your odds quite a bit. Maarten Dammers is in contact with the Council of Europe and CARARE, and can probably put you in contact with your national organization. Maarten, can you please try to help them out? I am looking forwards to any updates! If you need any further help or advice, please let us know, we are happy to assist in any way possible. With kind regards, Lodewijk