On 18/08/16 21:01, John F. Eldredge wrote:
I know I am replying to a two-month-old message, but the idea of restrictions on entering postal codes is baffling. At least in the USA, the Post Office encourages the use of postal codes (called Zip codes) on mail, to expedite the delivery of mail, and used to publish large reference books listing the postal codes for every address in a particular area. Nowadays, they have a web site where you can enter an address, and look up the postal code for that address. What would be the purpose of postal codes that aren't told to the general public? Or, is it that the postal code boundaries are restricted, but the postal code for a given address is not restricted?
Post codes in most countries aren't defined by boundaries - certainly that is true in the UK and I believe in the US as well. Rather they are defined as a list of addresses and any boundary is inferred.
But to get back to your point the reason is basically a wish to make money by licensing the post codes!
Even in the US I don't believe there is any free data source for zip codes in bulk - there is the US census zip code tabulation areas but those are not quite the same thing.
Like the US the Royal Mail provides a web site where you can look them up but it has restrictions on the number of lookups you can do in a day so that they can ensure commercial users have to pay for access to a licensed API or raw data sets.
Yes, it's stupid, but when did that ever stop somebody when they are given an effective monopoly and a license to use it to print money for themselves.
Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
