On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 4:11 PM, Steven Johnson <[email protected]> wrote: > To my knowledge the DSF is not available as a public domain data > set; back in the '90's, the US Census Bureau had to get Congressional > permission to use it for creating the Master Address File (MAF).
The USPS claims copyright on pretty much all of its databases. Whether or not that copyright is valid is another story, and also not all that relevant unless someone wants to spend thousands of dollars buying a copy of the database, giving it away for free, and waiting to see if the USPS sues them. (*) An alternative might be to try making a FOIA request to the US Census Bureau for its list of all valid addresses (not geolocated). They have so far successfully claimed that the *geocoded* list of addresses is exempt for privacy reasons, but I don't think anyone has made a request for the *non-geocoded* list. (*) Incidentally, if you'd like to buy a copy of the database and give it to me, I'd be willing to be the guinea pig who redistributes it, or at least those portions of it which I don't think are copyrightable. I'm confident enough to stick my neck out that any claimed copyright on a trivially ordered list of all addresses in the United States is not valid. But please don't break any contracts in doing so. Here's the list of vendors: http://www.usps.com/ncsc/ziplookup/vendorslicensees.htm _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
