Hi,
Recently, I noticed that Commons has a template allowing anything
published in the Marshall Islands to be included on Wikipedia, since
they have no domestic copyright law.
Upon seeing this, I planned on going to a local library, getting copies
of books and newspapers printed in the Marshall Islands, and then
scanning and uploading them to Commons or Wikisource.
However, upon further investigation, I realised that the
interpretatioin of Commons is not, to my understanding, correct.
The reason I say this is that the United States (and indeed, Berne
Convention countries in general) extend protection based on citizenship
and place of usual residence.
So if a dual Marshallese-United States citizen (for example) publishes
something in the Marshall Islands, it can't be hosted on servers in the
United States, despite its place of publication.
Fortunately, there do not seem to be many Marshallese files uploaded to
Commons yet, so even if many have to be removed, the loss will not be
great.
Normally I would just be bold and make a change to the template, but
given the wide-reaching implications, I thought that it would be worth
discussing here.
Thanks,
Riley Baird