Some servers in the UK would allow us to keep many
images which are
allowable under the UK's broad FOP provisions, but which are not allowed
in the US.
As far as I know, the location of the servers is not really relevant. It's
relevant who runs the servers, and also where the work was created, and where
the uploader is located. The "golden rule of thumb" on commons is: it has to be
PD in the US, the country of origin (or first publication), and the uploader
should check with local laws. I don't think we can get around this.
So, just having a couple of servers in different places wouldn't help - it would
have to be a completely separate organization. Which would also mean that images
on such servers can't be used seamlessly on Wikipedia, etc.
Trying to interpret copyright law in the context of an international project
driven by user created content is a real challenge; sticking with something like
the smallest common denominator seems to have worked ok. Trying cheap tricks to
work around this ("this image is ok now because the bits are on a different
server") will only create an ugly mess, and is also not legally sound, as far as
i know. As I said, it would have to be a completely separate, UK based project
for "PD in UK only" stuff, having nothing to do with Wikimedia.
But IANAL. I'm just saying that technical solutions to legal problems tend not
to work.
-- Daniel