Geeklawyer is a bit late to this story. Royal Fail has just stamped out the very use­ful ser­vice from ernestmarples.com that was pro­vid­ing free post­code data to a num­ber of web­sites. Those sites pro­vide use­ful socially ben­e­fi­cial & non-commercial ser­vices to the pub­lic (though there’s noth­ing wrong with them mak­ing a profit either). The Marple web­site pro­vided the post­codes and GPS co-ordinates via an API but what the orig­i­nal source of the data was is unknown to all but Richard pope and Harry Met­calfe, and they ain’t saying.

The Royal Mail is very lucky to have their busi­ness: you picked up the tab for its cre­ation and cur­rent mar­ket power via your taxes and, his­tor­i­cally, the bur­den of the par­a­sitism that is our Monar­chy. Hav­ing paid for it once this data is now being locked away for the ben­e­fit of a quasi-governmental busi­ness. It is true that they need the prof­its since they are in a deep finan­cial hole, but that is their prob­lem and not a basis for the hand-out we are being forced to give them. At the moment these inno­v­a­tive new web­site ser­vices are being sti­fled by Royal Fail set­ting a min­i­mum £2000 a year (pos­si­bly much much more) for a licence to use to use the PAF and Post­Zon files (the lat­ter con­tain­ing the GPS co-ordinates relat­ing to post­codes). In real­ity there is no legal need for such a charge. Accord­ing to the Licence granted to the Royal Mail as a con­di­tion of its operation(full pdf):

Con­di­tion 22: Access to the Post­code Address File
1.     For as long as the Licensee is the owner of or has con­trol over the Post­code
Address File (in this con­di­tion referred to as “the File”), the Licensee shall –
(a)    main­tain the File in an elec­tronic for­mat that can be read by
com­puter soft­ware pack­ages that are com­monly avail­able, and
(b)    fur­nish a copy of the File to any per­son who may request it upon
pay­ment of a rea­son­able charge.

Geeklawyer would inter­pret this as allow­ing a charge of noth­ing, or a nom­i­nal charge, for use of the file if, in the cir­cum­stances of the PAF licensee, it is rea­son­able to do so. And in con­sid­er­ing ‘rea­son­able­ness’ the com­mer­cial cir­cum­stances and social util­ity of the licensee are proper fac­tors to con­sider. But of course that might involve Royal Fail get­ting less money, so guess what their atti­tude is.

A recent study indi­cated that Britain would, per­haps counter-intuitively, ben­e­fit greatly from free­ing this and other pub­licly gen­er­ated & funded data. For starters Gov­ern­ment would no longer have to sub­side the ser­vices it once owned (in Royal Flail’s case £50Million a year of tax­payer money) and pri­vate com­pa­nies could cre­ate finan­cially lucra­tive ser­vices by adding value on top of the raw data; that at least was the gist of the recent Power of Infor­ma­tion Report to the Government.

The Guardian is run­ning a very strong cam­paign to free our data. Where this cam­paign goes is anyone’s guess but now we know the Gov­ern­ment is bank­rupt and hav­ing to pawn £16Billion worth of the nations sil­ver to finance bribes for the next elec­tion shore up the nation’s finances, what are the chances of not just the Royal Mail but the Ord­nance Sur­vey Maps and other pub­lic organ­i­sa­tions giv­ing away our data for the nation’s greater good? Yea, my thought too: sweet fuck all, how would the bosses get their mas­sive bonuses?

In the mean­time why not write to your MP to com­plain about Royal Mail?