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?

Comments

A Freedom of Information Act Issue?

[Ravenfeather]

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 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) establishes a presumption that records in the possession of agencies and departments of the Executive Branch of the United States government are accessible to the people. This was not always the approach to federal information disclosure policy. Before enactment of the FOIA in 1966, the burden was on the individual to establish a right to examine these government records. There were no statutory guidelines or procedures to help a person seeking information. There were no judicial remedies for those denied access. With the passage of the FOIA, the burden of proof shifted from the individual to the government. Those seeking information are no longer required to show a need for information. Instead, the "need to know" standard has been replaced by a "right to know" doctrine. The government now has to justify the need for secrecy.

The FOIA sets standards for determining which records must be disclosed and which records can be withheld. The law also provides administrative and judicial remedies for those denied access to records. Above all, the statute requires federal agencies to provide the fullest possible disclosure of information to the public.

[ The emphasis is my own. ]

World Almanac

[quadong]

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.

ZIP is freely available. ZIP+4 is difficult

[toastyman]

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

Re:ZIP is freely available. ZIP+4 is difficult

[Artagel]

If the United States Government is the author, there is not copyright in it. The idea is that the Congressional record, judicial opinions, regulations issued by regulatory agencies, etc, etc are not copyrighted and anyone can copy them as much as they like.

The Supreme Court rejected telephone white pages as being copyrightable because the white pages do not have the "originality" that is required to make something a work of authorship. No matter how hard you worked to collect data, databases are not protected unless they have originality, usually expressed as "selection or arrangement." I can't believe that an address to zip code database qualifies, but YMMV.

There have been bills floating around for some years to address database protection, and the Europeans have already addressed that with their Database Directive. The idea is to protect databases from substantial copying for 15 years. I think that the small, but vigorous opposition is going to get steamrolled, but may succeed in getting a "fair use" exception put in. I haven't looked at this issue in a couple of years, so something may have even passed already.

In short, databases aren't always protected by copyright, so slap a license on them! A contract is still a contract...

Public Information, F.O.I.A, and accessibility....

[trims]

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

Free mirror. Zips + cities + latitude + longitude

[kinesis]

Fuck this shit. FREEdom of information.

http://sharedlib.org/zips.zip

Enjoy.

Re:Strange country

[Yet Another Smith]

Actually, there are probably as many things that are free in the US and for sale in Europe as vice versa.

For example, of the industrialized countries I have dealt with, only the US does not copyright its topographic maps. I can remember off the top of my head that Canada, the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands all maintain copyrights on government topographic maps, making it illegal to copy this data.

The USGS (United States Geological Survey), on the other hand, sells hardcopy topographic maps, digital elevation models, aerial photos, and even satelite imagery for about the cost of printing and shipping, or for some nominal cost of creation. The maps are not copyrighted, and any individual or business can copy, resell, alter, fold, spindle, or mutilate these maps at will. All US digital topographic data for the US is available for free via FTP. The US is unique in this, as far as I know, and this is part of my job.

The same is true for FCC market deliniations, and a great deal of Census Bureau data, including extensive street-network and hydrography data.

So it is probably unfair to cast the US as being cash-obsessed and the EU as being a non-materialist utopian society. Counter-examples do exist.

It's not just bulk mailers

[adamsc]

That said, the only people who have a use for a large database of zipcodes are mass marketers

There are also a few of us demented web developers who've wanted to do address validation in the past while selling stuff online. (Not just for billing, either. Doing a lookup is a good way of reducing the number of mis-delivered packages. ("According to the USPS, that address doesn't exist. Send anyway?") For some businesses this can add up to a non-trivial savings.)

For what it's worth...

[kaphka]

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.

What this is..

[GoRK]

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

Re:Privatize the post office

[w3woody]

Too late; been there, done that. In fact, the USPS has already been privatized--while they still answer to the US Congress under Title 39, they are ran "for profit" with it's own CEO and board of trustees.

Read more here at http://www.usps.gov/history/history/his3.htm#REORG

And that's why we pay $0.33 for a first-class mail stamp, boys and girls--because that's about what it costs on average to deliver that piece of mail to anywhere in the United States, including all those pesky little territories and to the US millitary men serving abroad. Last I checked, FedEx will also provide delivery of your letters--but for about one and a half orders of magnitude more.

Publicly available from me, I think

[Bruce Perens]

If you look at my free U.S. street map data There are zip+4 codes and congressional district boundaries in there, and they are not encumbered.

Bruce

Hear Hear!

[Pope]

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