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I checked the validity of the DNB reference which was added yesterday, and found that the text of the article was a very lightly rewritten version of the text of the article in the
Dictionary of National Biography, at
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/613 (note that to access it, you need to be a subscriber or to have access through an institution such as a public library).
I have therefore removed all substantive text from the article, leaving it with only an infobox and categories, tagged it with {{copyvio}}, and listed it at
Wikipedia:Copyright_problems#2007-05-31.
It does appear from the article's history that there are some earlier stubby versions which are not merely light edits of the DNB text, and it may' be possible to revert to one of those versions, if they are sufficiently substantive to be worth retaining.
"the text of the article was a very lightly rewritten version of the text of the article in the Dictionary of National Biography, at
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/613" – That's right. The new ODNB uses the same public domain source, the old DNB. As I stated
here, the original autor is A. J. Arbuthnot, date of the original publication is 1885.
Alexander John Arbuthnot died in 1907, so everything he wrote is in the public domain now. You can see the same phenomenon in the EB. They too – making their lives easier – use their old, public domain material from the 1911 EB, sometimes slightly rewritten, sometimes not. Greetings, --
Frendraught09:54, 13 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Frendraught, thanks for that info. I'm removing the copyvio tag based on your information. In such cases, it is especially important to note the source you're taking the text from, not just listing it in references. Talk page is good for giving such details, which are unimportant except when tracing copyvio allegiations. --
Alvestrand22:38, 14 June 2007 (UTC)reply