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The USPS-Selling Zip Codes or Public Information?
An Anonymous Coward asks: "What is the definition of public information? Would you think that the official names of cities and their Zip Codes would be public? In a way it is, because the USPS will allow you to do a lookup against their online database. The tricky part is trying to get the entire list, then the USPS wants you to pay. They could very easily provide the information in any database or comma delimited format on their website but they choose not to. Why? They are making a lot of money reselling this information to companies who repackage it and then sell it to the public. " Hmm...good point. But are zipcodes really public information?
As one coming from Europe, this country is strange: everyone is trying to make the most money out of anyone else: your neighbour, brother... makes no difference.
.sig send $2 at ...
How long it will take until the map will be something private?
I just saw a couple of weeks ago a big sign in the continuation of a big street saying that from that point on, the traffic is no longer public.
But looking up and down the street, I can not see any difference...
ZIP codes are not the property of USPS... It's just a mean to slice the country in easy pieces.
I don't own my house address... I just happen to use it. I can not sell it to you.
But I cannot stop thinking that one day some wise guy will buy from the government all the rights to the name of my street and I will have to pay him royalties for using it on my mails.
It's just crazy.
If you want to see my
Yeah I noticed this last time i was looking up my zip+4. The way I figure is, its okay to sell public information as long as you don't claim ownership and control of that information. Basically, you to have the privilge (along with everyone else) of selling that information.
If this is true, would it be possible for someone to buy the zip codes and then post them to a web site? Its public info right?
Famous Last Words:
This whole question is a little confusing. Is there a question of whether ZIP codes are public info? Of course they are... and, do you have to buy it? I'm pretty sure you can get them from the post office almost free.. if not completely.
Just like everything else in life, this sucks.
Everywhere in commercialism there is someone withholding what should be free.
And what do we do about it?
Complain about it electronically. Bitch to our friends. We sit around and let our lives be run by someone else with all the power.
Try and change this and you are labeled a criminal or insane.
Food for thought.
Josh
XYZ-I finish what I start
What an interesting question! I am not a lawyer, but this seems like it might fall under the Freedom of Information act.
For a bit of background, I quote from one of the government's own web sites on the Act.The right of the public to obtain information held by the Federal Government is summarized in a report published by the U.S. House of Representatives, entitled "A Citizens Guide on Using the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act of 1974 to Request Government Records" (H.Rpt. 102-146), as follows:
[ The emphasis is my own. ]Zip codes are designed to make life easier for the postal department. You look at the code and know which PO is being referred to. You could send a letter without zip codes, with the postal dept having to take the trouble of vgrepping a text based list.(I'm not a US resident, so I can't be sure). They could sell the information by charging for the media, but not for the information itself. But if they are putting up the data on a website, they might as well make it free. Or are they making a profit by selling public information?
:)).
(Or is there a patent on zip codes?
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
I already posted on the subject, but... i think the reason the USPS offers online Zip codes for refrence... but offering lists of zip codes would be troublesome... some they let third-party companies offer them... for less of a hassle....
When I was checking out putting real estate info on CDROM back in the early 80's I ran up against many of the city/county asessor's offices that had made a deal with one paticular company that they alone would have sole right to microfiche the books. No other company could come in and reproduce the books. As we were a small startup this hit us big time and stopped us right there from going further. If you wanted the data of real estate transactions you could get it on 1200 bpi 9 track tape for any where from $2K to $20K per tape. Sheesh.
I had thought that information that was gather via public taxes and fees should be availible to the public for no additional cost. Boy were we naive.
Comma Separated Values.
Can't you get a basically free listing in the World Almanac? I mean, I guess it is not searchable, being on paper, but it is there, all you would need to do is either (1) get a lot of people to each copy a column into the comptuer and send it somewhere or (2) scan it in and use (very good probably to the point of non-existant) software to translate bitmap to text. I don't know what USPS sells it for, but it seems that it could be worth it to "open source" the data this way. (Oh and I understand that the World Almanac is not free, but the zip code part of it is like .5% of the total, so...)
Maybe the World Almanac is not complete? I dunno.
Hi,
The same quesiton could be asked for Canada. You can buy a book with the postal codes and type it in and it is legitimate. You can also pay for it of course (CanadaPost.ca - To order a Postal Code directory)
In the case of geographic data, I first turned to both mapblast and mapquest and after a few telephones, it turned out they would charge as much as 1$ per city for lattitude/longitude data.
Spent some more time on the phone and after 15 minutes, I got a government agency that would sell me the whole QC province information in any format I wished (access, DB, SQL dump, etc) for ~ 20$. How do you explain that?
Global greed warming.
--
Notepad specialist & FAT administrator, group training available Fabian Rodriguez
Notepad specialist & FAT administrator, group training available
Here in Japan, you can walk into virtually any post office in the country and pick up a book of zip codes for the entire country for a nominal fee. I believe they even supply them free to comapnies.
And believe me, since the switch to seven-figure zip codes a couple of years ago, they're pretty precise. My zip code covers an area of about one square kilometer.
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
one could argue (and i'm sure the USPS would!) that while the information itself is free, you are paying for their having "compiled" it for you, when you buy the whole lot.
well, that and they know a lot of businesses *need* that information, and as they have an effective monopoly on it, that they can get away with it...
to draw a parallel, when you pay your $29.95 for a linux distribution on cd, you're obviously not only paying for the cost of producing the package, but in addition the effort the company has put in to throw the whole lot together.
the implication of this actually endorses the USPS' actions - you can get the information free of charge as you need it (one would equate to downloading linux online... fine for one or two packages, inconvenient for a whole distro), but you pay for the convenience - and that's the key, here, of getting the whole lot done for you.
Fross
Makes me want to go back and re-read my Pynchon. We need some W.A.S.T.E. around here...
------
WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexx mmeeaann??
This sig intentionally left justified.
You can find databases of City/State to ZIP databases easily. What's actually valuable are more detailed databases.
For those not in the US, our postal codes (called ZIP codes) are 5 digits long. Every city has at least one, and some have many many more. In the early 90's, the post office added 4 digits to it, to narrow down to at least the street level, making computer sorting possible.
For me to translate '60618' to being 'Chicago, IL' is something that's pretty easy. I believe that old BSD distro's even came with a text file with all the zip codes. To translate my address to '60618-1481' is much more difficult. Even being able to tell which chicago zipcode my address belongs in (60618 is one of many), requires a full address database.
It's not really plausable to put a database this size up on the net. Several companies also pay the USPS a licensing fee to sell the database. Many also do 'value-added' additions, such as time zones, and the such. The last time I checked, a compressed database for the entire US to give street level zip lookups was around 4 CD's worth. I don't believe the USPS can justify the bandwidth costs in letting people download it, especially when a database of this size has to be difficult to maintain. (It's somewhere around 40 million records)
This company sells a pretty comprehensive set of CD's. It's not too expensive considering what you get. Especially if you send large amounts of mail, being able to verify the address/zipcode before you pay the 33 cents is nice.
Basically, Downloading a database this size isn't plausable for them, so they pretty much have to sell it on physical media... Now, if their raw data (not data that OEM's have added) is copyrightable, who knows. Perhaps one person can buy the raw data and put it on their ftp server? Who knows.
I thought it was illegal for government agencies to apply for copyrights... or was it patents? (I know there's the loophole for patents that an outside company can apply for the patent, then transfer it to the government)
Kevin
After the whole 'net censorship debacle, it's nice to see that us down under in australia can still avoid some brainless decisions.
here AusPost publish every postcode in the back of the freely delivered White Pages phonebook, and you can still visit the austpost web site and download the entire list in CSV....
<? include ('signature.inc'); ?>
It's pretty obvious that the zip codes are public, since that's how the public sends mail to a particular place. If the zipcode were "private" it would be practically impossible to do business by mail. Or to use it for any other purpose for that matter.
There is a way to look up any Zip Code on line, you can do it at the USPS's Zip code lookups page
That said, the only people who have a use for a large database of zipcodes are mass marketers, and IMHO they OUGHT to pay for having it. I don't want it to be any easier than it needs to be for those morons to send me dead trees.
Zip codes are public information. As are street addresses, with the associated occupant name. However, the issue here is not of access to the information (the Freedom of Information Act guarrantees you can get it), but the ease with which you can get it.
The FOIA says nothing about the format, or relative accessibility of the information that you request. The government is not obligated to give it to you in the format or way you want it. They just have to give it to you. People who've done research into alot of old events can atest to this: rather than get a nicely indexed and annotated set of transcripts, they get a huge stack of unlabeled and unsorted documents. Digging through them is the effort.
Honestly, I don't have a problem with it this way. The government shouldn't be in the business of neatly packaging everything for anyone who asks. Deliberately hiding the truth is one thing, but they've got alot better things than being able to give any Tom, Dick, or Harry a complete, nicely pressed and indexed book of any random information they request.
That's the value-add that those companies selling the Zip-codes have. They get the info from the govn't (which might have done some pre-sorting it for their convenience, and rightly charges for it), and then package it up for you to use in a slick format. You can get the information from any Post Office you ask, but I'm sure it's not going to be in a nice electronic format. After all, you're getting it for free.
Honestly, people, we're getting really lazy these days.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Fuck this shit. FREEdom of information.
http://sharedlib.org/zips.zip
Enjoy.
Many years ago I bought a dead tree version of the zip code directory from the local post office. It was as big as a phone book, and about two inches thick. I don't think it would fit into the World Almanac. Remember, it has to include the zip code of every address in every city, and the countryside as well.
Information is not Knowledge
Or at least they should be owned by the public.
If the public saw the need that they have for free access to information which their mere existants IRL produces.
But do they ?
Guess Not, Oh well
What this means is that for some things it costs money or at least more money for the government to get that information to you.
Think about it. Yes the information that identifies a position in the US via a ZIP code as public inbformation. You could very easily just get a collection of all of these and just publish them in an open source book or something.
What really takes it in the government's rear is trying to pay or distrubute everything to everyone cost effectively or conviently. Do they tend to want to favor more money to fund their activities? Yes. Will they prevent you from obtaining that information? No.
Their search interface probably gets more hits per day than you might realize. Since they can only afford so much to pay for maintaince and upgrading the server for content then they need a way to offset that cost so they have the entire thing to sell in a printed version.
For something similar take a look at http://thomas.loc.gov and look at the congressional reccord. This reccords every single thing that is done or said in the house and the sente for the day. Now you can get the entire thing off their web site for free but if you want something more convient you have to talk to the government printing office http://www.gpo.gov. Since everyone wants budget cuts and lower taxes this is what we get.
As for your concern about street names this is not likely. If you want to have someone use you address you can just sell your house. Just similarly how say 234.34.123.34 is an address to someplace on the internet and is owned by a computer as a physical address in a geographical locality the same can be said for a house address. If someone were to but names of things you would have Cleavlend in Minnesota or LA in New York State. This cannot happen.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
I believe you'll find that the licensing issue comes from the costs in distributing the data. The full database is fairly large large and there's apparently a bit of cleanup involved as well (Also IIRC, the data was developed for internal usage; as is often the case it needs a little packaging before being sent outside). If you look at the costs, it's around a $900 to get a copy on CD-ROM according to the price guide on page 113 of the USPS's product doc. I think once you factor in the production costs (which aren't amortized over a huge distribution base) this is probably not that unreasonable. Unless I'm mis-remembering, government agencies are allowed to charge fees to cover production costs on information, even if they're required to give it to you. Even though the USPS has a somewhat unusual position compared to more traditional government agencies, this probably still applies.
Without a doubt, zipcodes are public or at lease should be public. The USPS is shortsighted by not distributing the list freely in an open source manner. One day when UPS releases their superior upscode format in a open-source manner, zip codes will become archaic and obsolete and the post office will quickly be regretting their selfish ways.
This is just another of the silly problems we have because the post office is a government agency.
Next time you're in the post office, have a look at the clerks. They're nice people, but what do they do that's different from the guy at the 7-eleven?
How much more complicated is it to deliver letters versus delivering a newspaper? 50% more?
Now, how much do you think the post office workers make compared to paper boys and convenience store clerks?
Think about it next time you go and buy a roll of 33 cents stamps. If the post office had to compete, maybe the stamps would be 20 cents or less.
The information IS free, the compiling of it into a usable form is not. Why is this such a hard concept to understand? If you want to take the time to compile a list of every city in the US and their zip code, you are welcome to do it. But if someone has ALREADY done it, I for one would be willing to pay for that.
Why do so many people have trouble distinguishing between raw data and usable information? This is a no brainer to me. That's why I pay for maps. Sure I could go to city hall, get the list of street names and the fucking surveyors maps or whatever, and create my own map. But why!!
Every book ever written is in the dictionary, but I'll gladly pay for someone to put the words in order.
Honestly, I don't have a problem with it this way. The government shouldn't be in the business of neatly packaging everything for anyone who asks. Deliberately hiding the truth is one thing, but they've got alot better things than being able to give any Tom, Dick, or Harry a complete, nicely pressed and indexed book of any random information they request.
I disagree. The whole point of government is to serve the people. I think this is something that has been forgotten over the years and has almost become expected that politicians be self-serving while putting on a little song and dance for "the little people". This apathy allows things such as this to happen.
If I want every zip code in America in a nice neat little package on CD-ROM, should I have to pay for it? Yes, about the price of producing the CD. Why shouldn't I pay more? Because not only is this public information, but it's information that's freely available. If the information were public but held by a company, I would understand them wanting to turn a profit for their time and devolpment. The goverment I expect to do what I (not particuarly *ME* but the majority) to do because that is why they hold a public office.
P.S.
People are not lazy because they ask for free information to be released in a useable format, they're merely asking the government to do their job. What we tell them to.
--Aaron
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
For a while last year I was working on a massive demographic database for research purposes. At least, it was to be massive, eventually.
The core of the database was to be (is?) data from the 1990 US Census. There's a whole lot more than population counts in there, folks... The entire Census is distributed on around 60 CD-ROMs.
This information is "free," in the sense that you can find it at any official government document repository. You're "free" to lug in a wheelbarrow full of floppy disks, and copy the CD-ROMs onto them, one disk at a time. If you actually want your own copy on CDs, though, the price tag is well into the four figure range. (And let me tell you, getting a hold of the discs is only the beginning of the fun...)
I suspect that this, and the similar situation with ZIP codes, is just another example of the $17,000 toilet seat phenomenon. Presumably, $100 per CD-R is considered a reasonable "duplication fee" in the beaurau... buerau... (good god, I need to go to bed...) bureaucratic world.
MSK
"If I want every zip code in America in a nice neat little package on CD-ROM,
should I have to pay for it? Yes, about the price of producing the CD. "
The real question is "Is the CD copyrighted?". If not, then I don't see the problem. If enough people want it surely someone will buy a it and distribute copies at a reduced cost.
In today's world, the question is no longer is this information public, rather is it safe secure, in that can someone else use it.
In the case of zip codes, there are very few conceivable ways that this information could be used against you. As such we can rule it is secure. In terms of whether it is public (information) or not, i am inclined to say it is. It is atleast as public (information) as Telephone numbers and addresses (e-mail included), if not more so (due to its less personal, ability to track so easily.)
If the USPS makes their database searchable from the web site, great, everybody on the net can use it. If they start charging too much for (convenient) CD's, companies like cheapbytes will start reselling this "publicly available" information at a far lower price, thats how a free market economy works.
-earl
This is nothing compared to what telemarketers and people like insurance agents have as a reference.
My Uncle is an Insurance agent, I worked on his machines a few times as a favor. He had cd-roms just loaded with databases of people's names, addresses, incomes, and some have information of known insured properties with other companies.
Point being: this information is easy to get. The USPS is just another source. Oregon DMV used to give out any information on anyone with a SSN and a Drivers License number, until someone posted a copy of thier publicly availiable database on the net. Since then policies have changed significantly.
-Erik-
Q: What's the difference between the USPS charging for the "free" info and say... Redhat charging for "free" linux.
A: The USPS pays the people that do the work.
Both enable SPAM delivery :(
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Thank you.
What are the 7th and 8th rows? I'm guessing 7th to be 1990 cencus population in zip code, 8th maybe a calculated figure based on that?
If there's any interest I know an anonymous source that could add some congressional district information to most of the zip codes. Accuracy won't be the best, but it's better than nothing.
I'd like to see the ZIP+4 lists distributed, too; I have doubts about the utility of the information. The +4 codes are more internal to the individual post office than you might think, my mail carrier has hinted that those used after my zip code are his route, the other guy's route, and PO boxes. This being a government operation, these do not correlate with the Carrier Route codes in any way (CAR-RT SRT).
I'd like to see the ADC and AADC tables and such made public, too, and the Carrier Route stuff and all the rest of their data. I can probably scrounge a non Berne Convention hosting service if I can get the data. Post here if you're interested, I'll get in touch.
Having done too much third class and other bulk mail sorting in my day, let me take this opportunity to express my continued deep disgust with the PostOrifice(TM) Way of Doing Things.
Insanely complex presort requirements that depend on vast databases which are more expensive than state secrets, and when you're done all your carefully banded trays get dumped into same sorting bin for the machines to process. Quarterly updates to the 7 volume rule book (that was years ago, it's probably grown); no way to actually lay hands on a current copy. Recent copies are available in "digital text" from a third party, if you've got Windows and the patience or desperation to use the crappy little viewer program it depends on.
I could go on but I shouldn't. Anybody who does bulk mail with the intent of saving money instead of just giving some of the mailing costs to a big commercial outfit knows the rant in all details.
...how hard it is to provide universal postal delivery.
First off, the US Postal Service delivers more mail than virtually ALL PRIVATE COMPANIES COMBINED. Last I looked, they were planning on moving somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 BILLION pieces of mail, packages, etc. for the 1999 Christmas Season (that's late Nov -> late Dec). UPS and FedEx might be lucky to do a half-billion each in the same time frame. Thier job is an order of magnitude more difficult than private industry.
Moving mail is an inordinately complex and complicated job. Express Delivery is actually MUCH EASIER than standard 1st-class mail. Granted, 3rd-class (bulk) and packaging (along with Priority and ExpressMail) are the same complexity as UPS and FedEx deal with, but there are several other things you forget:
The $0.33 for a stamp gets that piece of mail anywhere in the US. The great thing about universal postage is that you (the consumer) don't have to think about it; no matter where it goes, it's the same cost. I seriously doubt that a private company could manage to maintain this, with competetive forces. You'd end up with pricing structure like: $.10 for cross-town, $.15 for the next city, $.25 for the next state ( or was that $.15, since the next state is 10 miles away.. Whoops!). At the bare minimum, you'd end up with a regional cost structure - look at how UPS charges for where you send a package. And to put a more fine point on it, the USPS is cheaper than either FedEx or UPS at the same thing. Looked at book-rate shipping? Or how about comparing the cost of a overnight package?
Also, the USPS give UNIVERSAL SERVICE. Yeah, right, if you privatize things, you think anyone is going to get mail out in West Nowheresville? It's not "profitable". How many places do FedEx and UPS not deliver to that the USPS does?
Yes, perhaps the P.O. clerk isn't alot more skilled than a 7-eleven guy. But that doesn't have any affect on the reasoning behind the USPS. Some things are far better done by a government monopoly - mail service is a shining example of one. It's very efficient (for a large organization), cheap (no one in the world beats it for price/features), and dependable (UPS and FedEx lose stuff too, remember? And at not really any different frequency.).
Bottom line, the USPS works, works well, and works far better than some "privitized" system would.
-Erik
Think before you spew...
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
This is simply a case of an entity charging a service fee for packaging free data. HELLO this is what RedHat and all the other linux distros do. You want it on a CD? You (or somebody) pays (at the very least) shipping and handling (cover our costs) charges. In some cases you pay big bucks for value added services such as support. This is no different than what the post office is doing.
You want the entire list for free? Go to the post office and you may freely molest the paper zip code directory chained to the counter. You can even hand copy or photograph each page if you so desire. Its when you need the data in your hot little hands that money starts to be an issue. Sure the zip code information is politically free but what about the people who sit around all day assigning zones and keeping the central database updated? What about the people that typeset that enormous tome chained to the post office counter? That's going to cost you money! This is a no brainer. The post office is in the right!
Here's an idea: How about some nice resourceful individuals get off of their bitch-against-corporate-america asses and start an open information project like the one for road maps of the USA (I forget the name/address) and compile a list of zip codes and their associated information into a nice manageable database and give it out free?
~GoRK
IMHO, government agencies should provide this information for no more than the cost of making it available (in this case virtually nothing).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
By the way, folks, in an effort to reduce your tax bill (hah!) the US has spun the USPS off into a "public" company. That means that the USPS is expected to be run "for profit", even though congress ultimately controlls the USPS. (Think of the USPS as a corporation with our congresscritters on the board of directors.)
Amongst other things, that means the USPS is expected to charge for "free" information in order to cover the cost of duplication, packaging, and having a secretary drop it in the mail to you. And if they can figure out a way to make a profit, they will.
It's either that, or paying an extra penny or two in USPS subsidies.
Buy BeOS. They include zipcode.txt
I'm not sure about software copyrights. I once got into an argument with an engineer who included copyright notices in his source code, he insisted that the software could be copyrighted, even though it was written by civil service employees.
Would the courts consider the USPS a private corporation or a component of the federal government?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If you'd like to pay for the bandwidth so the USPS can let you download what apparently is 4 CDs worth of data (for the ZIP+4 database), then, by all means, step up to the plate. Some of us have better things to do than start holy wars over everyone who has the gall to charge for a service though.
I got it from here.
-A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
how much is it a federally approved corporate monopoly?
Hmm... how can the USPS be a monopoly when you have UPS, FedEx, TNT and dozens of other carriers transporting mail and packages around the country?
I thought the whole point of zip codes is to make it easier for the postal service to deliver mail. The harder the postal service makes it to access zip codes then it's more likely people will omit the codes. Then the postal service has a harder job.
If I want every zip code in America in a nice neat little package on CD-ROM, should I have to pay for it? Yes, about
the price of producing the CD. Why shouldn't I pay more? Because not only is this public information, but it's
information that's freely available. If the information were public but held by a company, I would understand them
wanting to turn a profit for their time and devolpment. The goverment I expect to do what I (not particuarly *ME* but
the majority) to do because that is why they hold a public office.
Ahhhh....but do "the majority" want a cd rom of all the zip codes in the US? I doubt it. My feeling is they have enough trouble doing the big things which the majority clearly do want, so I'd rather they didn't spend too much time or resources on things like this which are of a minority interest.
Just a thought...
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
"As far as I am concerned, their mail monopoly should be revoked and they should compete with UPS, FedEx, et al, for the delivery of first class and bulk mail."
You're kidding here right? The USPS is a branch of the government, not a busness. It is not out to make a profit, nor does it. Do you think FedEx or UPS would deliver a letter anywhere in the country for a meer 33 cents? Perhaps we should end the "monopoly" the military has as well?
--- Keep the choice with the user..
I wonder if I could have a population data too? This would make a "linuxcounter" database of USA much easier to maintain!
If anyone has such a database for other countries (how about the whole world?), please send it to me! I need "Town/state/country", and having "lingitude/latitude" and "inhabitants" would be great!
I wonder if I could have a population data too? This would make a "linuxcounter" database of USA much easier to maintain!
If anyone has such a database for other countries (how about the whole world?), please send it to me! I need "Town/state/country", and having "longitude/latitude" and "inhabitants" would be great!
In Sweden the postoffice charges only a nominal fee for all the zip-codes on a disk.
Probably they figure their cost of incorrectly addressed mail is what really costs.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Postcodes here in the UK are the intellectual property of the Royal Mail, they sell the PAF (Postal Addresses File) for 1500 pounds...
Mind you we have to pay 101 pounds for the priveledge(????) of watching TV.
Rich (who's hooked the damned thing into several web sites)
HELLO'S!!
merpata, á ""ZIP CODES"" pero la nasata airiba! quesa to londata bera mudábano, é perala, qea's ó dara kimba!!!
Well, if you need to look up the zip code of a city, it's available on the U.S. Census website absolutely free(it won't look up zip +4, though).
The URL is:
You can also look for a city and state name and find all the zip codes assigned to that city.
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer
First I think you forget that the USPS is not a government agency. It was split away some time ago. Second there selling a collection of things, IN this case citys and zips. Its the collection there selling not the data. If you want the data. If you want to organize the data you can collect your own zip/cities list.
I work at the USPS and with the SOME of the databases used to drive teh beast. I'm NOT going to log in and risk being harrassed. The database should be available but the real issues are more about the accuracy and embarrassment we would have should the information get out. Plus 4? HA! Doesn't even work from a centralized database. Most of them are 9998 which means 'Postmaster', i.e., "We don't know a real plus 4". Additionally the USPS isn't really centrally governed/managed. The country is divided up into 85 'Districts' which have their own head honchos. It's more like a Kingdom and Baronies than anything. The reason you get your mail is because the people are really GOOD at delivering it. If you addressed it to "Momma Dialy" in Pokemon, MN and just through it to the winds the human equivalent of DNS would get it there. Someone would send it to MN, they would route it to Pokemon, and more than likely someone would know just who the hell "Momma Dialy" is and get your mail there. Really. What DOES the zip do? Saves processing time and money. I've heard it only costs three cents to *process* a zip coded letter - but have no data on what the unzip coded one costs :(. I'd love to hook an open sourced program like GRASS up with USPS ZIPCODE data. 1. The commercial version USPS sells to vendors for sending JUNK(uh, we call it 'bulk') MAIL is wrong. They shouldn't be able to do it without my permission if they link it to my name. 2. If it was open sourced it would possibly be MORE ACCURATE!! What you really should be worrying about is this LARGEST CORPORATION trying to automate and eventually map your name to a specific address in the worlds largest advertising database. They are very proud of the fact that they have more face-to-face contact with the customer than anyone else, and have almost no clue as to privacy other than the mandates of congress (all personal data must be encrypted when sent over LAN/WAN lines) and are trying to be profitable and more corporate like. And we all know once a corporation has our data what they are going to do with it - whatever they damn well please. They wouldn't? You mean because they are regulated? Like the perhaps the DNS records are really regulated by the government and no corporation could stand against that right? Pah!
Well, so you could in Sweden. It was very cheap (don't remember if it was actually free).
Then they made it availiable on diskettes for free. You could easily walk down to your nearest postoffice and fetch it. It was a simple database, and a small DOS utility for searching. Type in the street address, the city, and up pops the zip code ("postnummer"). Or vice versa.
Then came the Internet era, and they made it searchable through the web. Note that you can still download the whole thing for free if you want to. There's a Win95 version and a Mac version (maybe I should ask for a Linux version? ;).
So they have always treated it as free information. The Swedish Postal Service ("Posten") is still the only authority that issues zip codes, but the zip code index is public information.
Maybe this is how it should be in the US?
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
The USPS has probably the single most valuable database in the world -- the names and addresses of very close to 100 percent of all Americans. If MS had such a database, people would be PO'd.
A better question is: What the hell do you need the list for? If someone gave you an address to mail something to them and they forgot the zip code then the USPS will give it to you for free. Why the hell do you need a list of every zip code? Are you planning a mass mailing? If so then I'm glad you have to pay for the list!
One of the people in our own office wrote a perl script which allowed us to download the entire ZIP code database from the USPS. :)
They really need the money, now that we (the world) are using e-mail so much. It's just self preservation. All we need to do is query the database with each number 000000000-999999999 then we'll have the whole thing.
I recall a few years ago when I got a slip of paper in my mailbox notifying me that I had a piece of certified mail I could pick up at the post office, with the only identifying information on the little yellow slip being the zip code. I had been at work when it was "delivered".
:-)
When I went to the post office and tried to look it up in the copy of the directory they had supposedly listing all the zip codes in the United States, strangely the number for my piece of mail was missing.
It turned out to be from the Internal Revenue Service (and for a person I had never heard of, BTW). Odd that the IRS prefers people not be able to tell where those certified notices come form isn't it?
(Yes, have Slashdot username. Anonymity selected this time for obvious reason.)
it has a .com instead of a .gov
Actually the USPS website is available at both http://www.usps.com and http://www.usps.gov, probably to end the possible confusion caused by differing sites like http://www.whitehouse.com and http://www.whitehouse.gov
If they know you personally, they already know your address including the zip.
If they were giving away this list to companies using it to spam junkmail to us all, somebody would have started a story claiming they should be sued.
your email address is public information, why not distribute that in a giant public database?
if the usps was giving the list to mass mailers, people here would be crying for their blood.
amusing really.
Micro$oft(R) Windoze NT(TM)
(C) Copyright 1985-1996 Micro$oft Corp.
C:\>uptime
Further, Americans may have paid for the ZIP development through taxes, but that doesn't mean that it should necessarily be publicly available to the world.
I strongly love the notion that "information should be free", but what justification can you offer in this case, other than "because I want it to be"?
I disagree. The whole point of government is to protect the people: from other people (murderers, thieves, terrorist, etc.), and from other governments that the people don't feel would protect them as well (hence the American Revolution). The less the governement does beyond that simple goal, the better IMHO.
When the post office started, it was a Good Thing because no private organization would have/could have done it. Perhaps it is time the post office was removed from government control. You would of course still need to keep some way of maintainng standards, like in the assignment of ZIP codes, but the actual collection, sorting, transport and delivery of mail could probably be handled much better (cheaper, faster) by a private company. Just watch out for that incompatible Microsoft Mailbox with ActiveZipCode.
"God does not play dice with the universe." -Albert Einstein
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
There ya go.
Besides, you US people shouldn't bitch about the Post Office for any reason: when was the last time they went on strike for weeks on end and nobody got any mail?
Exactly.
Unlike Canada, where I live, where the Post Office strikes every couple of years, the rates go up, and service gets worse. Oy.
I lived in the States for 7 years and was always amazed at the service, esp. SATURDAY delivery. Ah, I miss it. At least in my new neighbourhood I get the mail before 10:30 am.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Yep.
The submit & lookup for one or a handful of ZIP codes online (or going to the local post office and looking at the copy of the ZIP code reference sitting in the lobby) suffices for 'personal use'.
You are quite right: It is the "Bulk Business Mailers" that buy the books. I'm not too worried about them not being able to afford them. Nor do I wish to subsidize them (like with higher postage for example).
Another issue worth mentioning is the zipcode list is constantly changing. New zipcodes are added to accomodate new POs, and new +4s are added to accomodate new buildings. To keep your database current, the PO would have to allow you to download any records created *on or after* a certain date (the date of your last download). Otherwise you'd have to download the entire thing every few days to stay absolutely current. Maybe the answer is for the PO to provide an API to allow the people to query the "official" database in real time over the net. Fat chance of that ever happening.
This is possible, just
Not Recommended/Discourage.
The automated (and semi-automated, with hand keying of info) systems work by ZIP. Without it there are three possibilities:
1. Return to sender and get them to use ZIP.
2. Someone at the first post office in the path looks up (if they don't know it already) & adds the ZIP.
3. It gets sent to the someplace close, generally when in the right state workers can see what area of the state it need to go to and then the folks there can work by city name or neighborhood.
And I'm glad I'm doing that stuff anymore. (Actually the work isn't bad at all, but I swear, some of those postal supervisors had to be found by searching proctoligist's files the biggest...)
I happen to work for a major demographic / marketing firm.. we have access to all sorts of ZIP Code related material.... ZIP Code (standard 5 digit) are update yearly... .in1996 there were 35,414 in 1997 there were 35,407 ZIP Codes, in 1998 there were 35,405 and in 1999 there are currently 35,412, so you can see that thet do fluctuae (and of course these are just residential ZIPs , not PO Boxes or RPO/NPOs).
However, there are some organizations, such as the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) that allow you to buy their directory for a reasonable sum, but if you need the data in an electronic form, like we do, they charge you, quite literally an arm and a leg. The CD that we bought (actually, rent, as they want the CD back), cost at least 36 times that of the bound version of the data.
Even all the data with their own GUI on it is approximately $1500 (i am making an educated guess), and that data cannot be easily exported to a usable format (only 200 lines at a time, and with 600,000 records, it's rough). My question is this: "Which is cheaper, the development time for this GUI, or to put the data in comma separated value files?" Surely, it is the latter. I assume it boils down to the fact that whomever controls the data, holds the upper hand.
UPS and FedEx deliver to EVERY US address. Even the West Nowhere addresses.
I think the proof that ZIP codes are public is that they're created by a government agency. The government represents the people, and anything they do (with the exceptions of national secrets) are public information. ZIP codes are not national secrets, last time I checked at least. However, convincing the government to "repackage" the database in a downloadable format may be denied on the basis of how much it would cost them to do (millions of dollars of course ;-) and how much money they're making "for" the public (the government) by doing it this way. You people do of course realise that there isn't some dichotomy between the government and the public, right? You -own- the government by virtue of being a voter. Please, feel free to tell them how you feel, politely.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I think you can get the TIGER database from USPS for a nominal fee. It comes on about 10 CDs, and can be used for not only zip code lookup, but you can actully create interactive maps with it that look like MapQuest maps (or any other website that has a locator and interactive maps). I think the price for the whole set of CD's is around $50 if you get it from usps. Also, I believe you are allowed to reproduce/resell it, as it is public domain. Alek
One common use is to find stores or people that are "near you": enter in your zip code, and a radius, and you get back the stores/people/whatever in your area. For that, you need the zip codes and their longitude/lattitude. Nothing to do with mailing, and makes life easier for folks doing that kind of search. My company uses http://www.tpsnet.com/ for reference.
I disagree on one of your points, having done FOIA work for the Air Force for several months.
The Electronic Freedom Of Information Act of 1996 made several amendments to the FOIA, a few of which I'll list:
The rest of the EFOIA deals with administrative stuff, and probably isnt relevant here.
Thanks, Bruce. This is pretty damn amazing, especially posting it to /. - I figure that your ftp site is going to be SWAMPED for the next few days.
Folks, this is the real solution to the problem - instead of whining about somebody not having some piece of information availible, find a way to make it availible, then let everybody know where to get it.
InThane
Hello all, me and my friends use the following technique all the time to see exactly who is selling our names and addresses: if your name is 'John Pasquale', change it to 'John Padquale' in one of your outbound pieces of mail if you don't mind doing it, being sure to note who it was sent to. If you get a piece of spam with 'John Padquale' on it, you can almost be positive it was that entity you first sent the bogus last name to who's the name-selling culprit. Create further variations, such as 'Packquale' and 'Pazquale' and send the names off to more companies you suspect of selling your address and compile a hierarchal tree of junk mail and its dependencies based on time of receipt to see exactly who's selling what to whom. (For example, if you get one Pazquale one week, and five more the week after that, it's a sure bet the first company with Pazquale did the dirty deed. What you do after all of this is up to you... --fr0ntman
So why not just write a Perl script with a big for loop in it, and wget them all? :-)
\\'
It is more complicated than you think.
I live in Forest Lake. The FL Zip? 55025. My Zip? 55073. Yep, Scandia delivers my mail.
A friend used to live in St. Paul, West side.
West side Zip? 55107. His Zip? 55118.
Yep, West St. Paul delivers on Annapolis Ave.
Stick the wrong zip on my mail and it gets delayed by a few days.
The USPS database holds all of these special cases. From the USPS verbage on their
5 digit zip product:
"Five-Digit ZIP Product contains 5-digit ZIP codes and detailed, ranged street data only for cities with more than one delivery ZIP Code (i.e., multi-coded cities). . . . "
The whole point of government is to serve the people.
I agree inprinciple, but i disagree with your particular point. Government should serve "the people" (ie EVERYBODY - the whole group - not individuals) what they cannot provide for themselves (an army, the EPA, ambassadors, etc.) "The people" cannot generate a list of all zip codes, since only the Post Office has the information. It is reasonable to expect the government to provide us with a list of zip codes. On the other hand, given a list of zip codes, "the people" are quite capable of alphabetizing and sorting them on their own.
I would agree that if the government created a new computer system to maintain ZIP codes for governmental use, that system should either be a for the post office, then the information generated by the system should be available electronically. The marginal costs for doing this would be much lower than providing the same information on dead trees. The people who want to ftp it should get it for nearly nothing. the people who want the dead trees should pay for the printout.
I think the Government Printing Office should shrink, and some BIG ftp servers should take over some of its functions.
It has been a while since I saw the numbers (so no URL), but the USPS isn't as good as FedEx & UPS about getting the package there within the 'guaranteed' time specified. FedEx was in 1st place, UPS in a close 2nd, and the USPS was in third (I think it was their express mail), with a rather large percentage not arriving on time compared to FedEx & UPS.
-Michael [Remove two parts of address to mail me]
Actually, it's not quite the same as what Red Hat and other distros do. Rather, it might be what they *do* but differently funded.
Because it is an enforced monopoly, any work done by the USPS belongs to the taxpayers who funded it. True, it's not funded out of the general funds, but the end result for anyone who sends 1st class mail in the US is that you pay a tax because you're forced to subsidize the USPS' competition with FedEx, Avery, etc. In 1997 (according to a newspaper column I read, so the figure is somewhere between 'straight out of my butt' and 'the revealed knowlege of an omniscient God'), they cleared 50 million in profit on 1st class mail.
So I don't buy the argument that a subsidized government agency is *not* obligated to share the data it collects unless there is a good reason. So revealing *personal* information is not good, but geographic I think ought to be revealed unless there is compelling reason why not.
Otherwise, the USPS reveals its nature as (and as I think it really is!) a mercantilist rather than capitalist institution.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
This is a great resource. However, I have to wonder about how old it is based on a quick test. The file does not include an entry for Frankfort, Kentucky, which is the capitol of the state and currently spans 9 zipcodes! It lists "Hatton, KY" for the 40601 zipcode, which I believe was Frankfort's first zipcode, but being the capitol of the state, Frankfort has probably been in the postal system since the beginning of the century. Does anyone know to what date this data is accurate? Thanks.
-mark
The zip code system was publicly funded, ergo the codes are public property. The reproduction of useful lists, however, as with the reproduction of Linux CDs may be commercialized.
The galling part is that I was once told by a USPS official that the codes are not public property, which is, of course, the usual problem with the government forgetting who works for whom.
--- Bill
As for Zip codes, of course there Public, but the post office has a history of charging for the whole list for along time. I have worked for several companies who wan a database with all the zipcodes in them. Mostly for address confirmation, or so the user doesn't have to enter state info, and/or to narrow down the city chose list....
So we want nicely packaged info from the govn't on demand but we abhore taxes and can't see any reason why the internet should be taxed (refer to NC tax story). This has to ne paid for somehow....why not subsise it by charging the people who use it, rather than making us all pay.....
Well, ought not the government and quasi-government bodies you subsidize have their information in "nice electronic form," so we don't have to subsidize them more than we already do? (That is, by saving the work of mangling messy, difficult-to-understand data as collected into forms easily used by the folks at the Post Office
And laziness is an important human virtue -- at least if it is phrased as "the urge to avoid unnecessary work" rather than as "laziness."
It seems like the avoid-unnecessary-toil part of "laziness" ought to be integrated into the system, rather than only being the *delay* form of laziness. The people who would like to be able to read public information electronically / easily to me seem like the ones more in the right than the post office refusing to make their processes straightforwardly understandable.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I agree in principle, too, that government should effectively serve the people, but there's one oversimplification in the post I'm responding to that bears a counter-explanation, if you'll bear with me.
When you go to a government agency and ask for some public information, the person who helps you is not Jesse Helms, Jesse Jackson Jr, or anyone else Americans had to vote for to hold that job. They're people like you and me, who applied for and got a job in the public sector, and who are being paid your tax dollars to help you get that public information. Even if they could or wanted to, they do not have the freedom to think outside the box to help you the best way that they or you know how. They operate under a system that clothes, feeds and protects them, and tells them how they will "help" you. The system has a larger set of rules than you (or they) could imagine.
Does the system need fixing? ABSOLUTELY. [I currently contract for a branch of the Feds. I know this firsthand.] If there are things "that need fixing" in your job in the private sector, you can bet you'll never see a job in more dire need of fixing than there are in the public sector. It's worse than the oldest, most tradition-infested private company could ever, ever be.
But does it need fixing because "The goverment I expect to do what I (not particuarly *ME* but the majority) to do because that is why they hold a public office."?
To merely answer this question NO doesn't do it justice. My answer is more in the category of "What the f**k?"
It's not politicians or even public employees that need "punishing" to fix the problem. In order to make it work like you want it to, you've got to change the system under which the government and its employees currently operate.
It involves removing a couple dozen layers of management, modernizing a whole bunch of people who fear change as a matter of principle, hacking (as in slash and burn) a couple million pages out of the Rules for Government Workers, and rewriting the rest into something that people can do their jobs by in a manner that pleases the public. That's for starters.
Moreover, you've got to come to a concensus as a public that that's even what you want to do, much less decide on the manner that pleases the public.
The entire job will take a more monumental effort than has produced Open Source Software. By orders of geometric magnitude.
Al Gore tried to do this by himself early in his first term of service as Vice-President. You saw him on Letterman in safety goggles smashing glass ashtrays with a hammer. He was only half kidding. He actually did some of the job, for some agencies. But there's no way in hell one guy could unf**k Federal Government.
It's not a small job, but until you're ready to do it, just bitching about it isn't going to help much. And even then, it helps to bitch at the "right" people.
_____
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
Well, ought not the government and quasi-government bodies you subsidize have their information in "nice electronic form," so we don't have to subsidize them more than we already do?
One way or another, someone is going to pay for it.
If you have to pay a fee to get it in a convenient format, it is pretty obvious how you pay for it. If you get it in that convenient format for "free", your taxes will pay for it.
The difference is that in the latter, my taxes are also paying for it, and I might not be interested in subsidizing your use of the database.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I'd have to say that in Either case, this is wrong.
Let's look at both cases.
1) Zip codes & associated cities/neighborhoods ARE public information.
- This information should be freely available to the public, not sold at high price to others to sell commercially. Citizens should demand this.
2) They are *NOT* public information, but internal to the post office.
- Well, it could be argued that the ZIP code is only the post office's way of internally routing packages, so it's really up to them what they do with it. If this is the case, they are free to sell it as they wish.
- If you view the USPS as part of a 'public trust', and that this information is private and for internal use only, it should not be sold OR given out.
In 1998 the USPS was seriously considering handling all businesses by their Dunn & Bradstreet number. While this is an internal decision (based on the need for accurate addresses for their own 35,000 facilities, which do not have accurate addresses in the USPS' own databases) D&B access could well become a requirement outside the postal biz. If you haven't figured out why the Post Office does not know where it's facilities are, well, they don't have to know where they are, they only have to know the route...
This is bull, My company makes a POS system for the marine industry, as a (free)service to our customers we provide updated zip code info to them on a yearly basis, it used to be free. now we have to shell out $300-600 for a csv. fuckin bulshit
!p00p
You can get all that groovy data here:
U.S. Gazetteer Place and Zipcode Files
They have zip codes, towns, locations, populations, and the file sizes are small and straight text. No need for 2+ gigs of TIGER information.
http://www.usps.gov/ncsc/lookups/look up_zip+4.html
-----Transmission Complete----- If you want to email me...Don't
I have here in front of me a copy of the Address Information System Products Technical Guide which accompanies the 'Zip code' products available directly through the USPS. I see no copyrights on the information. Software development from this information is encouraged and helpful hints are included.
-= Why can't I add 'Anonymous Coward' to my list of Foes? =-
How much do short order cooks make? How about fast food preparers? How much for stockboys at the grocery store? Is the mail more important than food? 33 cents is too much because it's more than the economic price. A private company would do at least as well for much, much less.
Each time I move into a new place, I invent a new postal code. Thus, the USPS should not profit from my intellectual property.
Now... If only I knew why my mail never arrives.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Now, my father has put in countless hours of work on a particular piece of software (we'll call it Stat-Foo), but by law is not allowed to profit in any way from it. He cannot sell copies to the public sector, if someone calls or emails him with a support question, he must help them for free.
The software had one FOIA a few years ago, from a medium-sized software company. Just like was mentioned above, there are no requirements on what form the information comes in. So my father sent the requester the compiled source code printed out on several thousand sheets of paper.
Was this fair? It depends on how you look at it. Is it fair for a random company to request my father's software and then begin selling it? Then again, is it fair for my father to be somewhat of a jerk in chosing the information's form as printed-out compiled source?
Thoughts?
> But I cannot stop thinking that one day some wise guy will buy from the government all the rights to the name of my street and I will have to pay him royalties for using it on my mails.
It IS possible to get your mailed delivered without a ZIP code.
Ask your Post Office about General Delivery.
Unfortunately I still have a zip-code, but I know many sovereigns who do not and have their mail delivered.
Cheers
and though I believe they should be compensated for both the media and the work to maintain the list (though the post office HAS to do the work anyways to function themselves), I also believe that they are charging way to much for this thing. My guess it that it is to make up for some of the loss of revenue from email.
We paid $300 for a years subscription to the City/State database (I think we'll get a disk every couple months). The CD that we received contained the zip files for all 12 of their zip code databases but you need to call a 1-800 number to get the password for the database that you purchased. There are absolutely no applications on the disk - just raw data. If you want to read the files you have to write your own app (or purchase one) that knows how to read the files. An interesting note is that I have not seen any licensing agreements concerning use of the databases - including repackaging and selling them (though I could see headaches keeping them updated). In fact for the last 10 years or so we have just been extracting the data we need from the database and distributing the resulting file for use within our software package (we had been subsribed to the service up until about 4 years ago - somebody in our company just decided it would probably be a good idea to update our data files, so we just re-subscribed).
On a side note: it was rather funny getting this package from the post office that had "WARNING - Magnetic Media - DO NOT X-RAY" stickers all over it and the only thing in it was a CD =)
LRJ
They let mail be delivered in 72 hours instead of the standard 3 days.
Although a lot of Americans don't realize this, they have no basis in law for a right to privacy. In Europe, on the other hand, privacy laws do exist. This is a major issue -- one reason the U.S. gov't. tried to get Internet types to agree on privacy rules is that European Economic Union (do I have that right? EEU?) has stringent privacy laws which U.S. commercial entities violate constantly. This is seen as a threat to U.S. trade, since European Union may lawfully forbid U.S. companies (or European affiliates of them) to use data in ways taken for granted by U.S. In fact, unless EEU passed an extension, a ban would have gone into effect either just recently or in the near future (I'm the techwatcher; I don't track politics!) preventing most U.S. firms from engaging in commerce in much of Europe.
In the US the USPS has several advantages over FedEx and UPS that make cost comparisons like the one above useless if not actively deceitful. UPS cannot put a letter in your mailbox (and neither can anyone else) because the Congress has ruled that this is illegal. FedEx is prohibited by law (along with everyone else) from delivering regular first class mail that is not "urgent".
Every once in awhile, the USPS enforces that provision and people have to justify the urgency of a letter or package or they get hit with a stiff fine. The postmaster general used to (maybe still does) cite this provision in his stock speech, talking about how he would throw away any mail that reached him in a UPS or FedEx envelope because it wasn't delivered by the proper route.
To say that this sort of comparison is fair is ludicrous. The legal restrictions ensure that neither FedEx nor UPS will build up the infrastructure to carry a business that they aren't allowed to compete for. So the pro-statists "prove" that private enterprise can't deliver mail.
As for the idea of zoned delivery costs, they aren't pre-ordained but they wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. After all, AT&T simplified our life for decades, all the while charging higher than necessary costs for basic telephone service. If you look at the privatized, competitive long distance market today, it *is* more complicated, but it sure is cheaper than anyplace else. And what's the latest innovation? One flat rate national calling over a cellular network that would never have been built in the old monopoly days. Private enterprise gives people what they want.
As for universal mail delivery several private companies deliver to all addresses in the US. Just another red herring...
DB
It's true that for any given chunk of work, someone is going to pay for it.
However, given that the post office spends / will spend a bunch of time and money gathering information on our/your tab, is it fair that you're not allowed to see the fruit?
Sort of like if town funds were used to purchase and house some fine outdoor sculpture inside an old Quonset hut that belonged to a minicipality whose taxes were used to fund the purchase. For sensible completion of transaction those tax dollars were already used to begin, the town should open up the quonset hut so that the people who paid for it can benefit from the use of their money.
It wouldn't make sense for a town to build *most* of a bridge, would it?
And as far as TANSTAAFL, well, I'm all for the Post Office drying up and blowing away, or at least being opened to full and fair competition, but the government seems to enjoy maintaining a monopoly on first-class mail just fine, thanks very much. We could buy an awful lot of Bistro Meals by eliminating the coercive USPS altogether. The Constitution only says that the Feds are to *establish* post offices, right?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Who says you need to be a big commercial outfit to get paid to process bulk mail?
Although, I must admit, the biggest mailing I have ever (personally) processed was 1000 pieces. My company's biggest is probably around 10,000 pcs.
The ADC list is very confusing. I'm still trying to figure out why mail for 701 gets banded with stuff for 353-357, and sent to ADC (NAME HERE) 348
-
Here is how they describe the information:
As part of the Tiger Mapping Service, we provide a 1990 Census gazetteer of counties, places and zipcodes in the United States, so you can find a place by name without having to know the LAT/LON coordinates. This is done using a simple text database condensed from Census data files. We are making this file available to the public. Note: The vintage of the geography in these files (Places, MCDs etc.) is 1990 to match the 1990 Census data available from the Census Bureau.
Some thing else that is interesting is a perl script that calculates the distance between two locations given the long/lat in the form of the previous db's with a relatively low margin of error, on the order of a couple tenth's of a percent. For more information, the website can be reached here.
This stuff is pretty interesting and I think I might even have a use for it. Please post any more insights.
The fee you pay the USPS for the first copy is reasonable, the duplication restrictions are not. All USPS databases legally ought be in the public domain, but are rather copyrighted by the USPS. The following is from http://www.usps.gov/ncsc/products/products.htm :
Products
Address Information System (AIS) Products
Customer License Registration/Agreement
Customers who want to copy, in part or whole, or redistribute any AIS product must pay a fee, which constitutes permission to duplicate a USPS product. Fee amounts are calculated by the initial price of the product and the number of copies a customer wishes to generate. A copy of the copyright regulations and the license agreement can be obtained by calling the National Customer Support Center at 1-800-238-3150.
If I buy the list from the USPS, can I prepare a comma seperated list and put it up on my anonymous FTP site?
My approach is to query the zip server on an as-needed basis, and cache the results. This works well for what I needed. Check out Here. I'll send the PHP source if you ask nicely.
bh@bhconsult.com
The next thing to remember is to put next things next.
If anyone is Intrested, I ran across this
Web page when i was Temping, i got tired of
looking in a book for the Zipcodes..
Whats cool about this, is it creates envelope
templates as well.. Oh, and its free too..
http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/adserv.html
-BlahSnarto..
I haven't actually bothered to look up the exact code, so I may be way off base, but I believe that the USPS is a monopoly by law. It sticks in my head that some time during the early 19th century there was a small, cheap, super-efficient courier company that ran mail between New York and Boston, and that they were shut down by a Congressional bill because they were doing more business than the USPS. Again, completely unsubstantiated because I'm feeling lazy tonight, so take it with a bottle of salt. If you really want to know, get diggin'. :)
btw, a complete list of ZIP codes came on the BeOS R3 CD, never checked the others though.
they are greedy and like other "companies" which is what they have become since they are part of the government, yet they have a natural monopoly which probably should be privatized since how is it fair to any other company when they control so many things ?
then when they profit hugely off of things like this, where does it go ?
does it help anybody remotely in anyway, well ?
no.
IIRC, nothing has passed yet.
Back at the end of July, RMS wrote up some details about the pending legislation (a good read on the matter).
If I'm wrong, then something on this page at eff.org will probably make it plain.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
--
WorldServe Consulting
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