If Royal Mail won't free postcodes, take them off it

Where does the line between code and data lie?

What if there's an algorithm that turns a simple string into a location, where everyone in the country knows the string that applies to them? What if a set of data is so central to that algorithm's operation that it can't work without it? What if there's only one source of that dataset? And what if the terms that the monopoly source of that dataset impose put it out of reach of small businesses and non-profit bodies?

This is the situation with UK postcodes. The Royal Mail maintains the database of post codes and charges for anything other than trivial access to it. While this might not be a problem if all it was used for was addressing mail, the post code has become a short way of referring to any populated place in the UK. Route planning software will take postcodes as input, and many web sites use your postcode to find locations near you, even if they're not going to send you post. Both of these examples can be done without needing a postcode, but you'd need to enter your location longhand somehow. Postcodes are short, memorisable and unambiguous.

While Royal Mail is still state-owned, it's run as a business rather than a public service. The cost of a licence for internet use is £5,450 per year. That's a lot of money for a small business or a voluntary organisation to spend. It also means the database can't be included in any Free or open source software. The Royal Mail defends itself by pointing out that the postcode system costs money to maintain, and that as an organisation it's expected to pay for itself. Whether they should be expected to make a profit or not is a political issue, not a technical one, but web developers and web users end up bearing the brunt of a central part of British commerce being under the sole control of one organisation.

There are, of course, alternatives to the postcode as a short code for location. The best is a Geohash, a public domain system that turns a point or a bounding box into a short code. Anyone can use the scheme for any purpose, and it covers the whole planet. Its only drawback is that codes it produces aren't memorable — the geohash for ZDNet UK's office is gcpvj8px8393, for instance.

There are also efforts to force the postcode database into the public domain. The legal protection Royal Mail has over the postcode database only applies to its database as a whole, not each individual post code. There's no copyright in a single postcode. This means that if you assemble your own postcode database independently of Royal Mail, they can't stop you using it. This is the principle behind the site freethepostcode.org, where you can enter your own location (from a GPS, or it's not your data) and your postcode. The NPE Maps site does something similar using out-of-copyright maps, but there's a good chance your house, and even your street, isn't on the map, so you'll have to guess its location.

The issue of postcode ownership and use came to a head late last week when the site ernestmarples.com was sent a solicitor's letter demanding the site be shut down immediately. The site, named after the rather colourful former Postmaster General, provided free access to the post code database over the web, allowing organisations that couldn't afford Royal Mail's charges to use postcodes. This included some useful non-profit community sites like Jobcentre ProPlus and PlanningAlerts.com. While the people who ran ernestmarples.com were coy about where they got their list of postcodes from, but since they haven't put up a fight the chances are it wasn't a legitimate source.

It's not just web geeks who disagree with how the postcode file is licensed. Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich East has written to Adam Crozier, Royal Mail's chief executive about the closure of ernestmarples.com, and believes the database to be a "national asset". Indeed, the postcode system was created at a time when the Royal Mail was still treated as a public service and not expected to make a profit, and the new self-supporting organisation inherited that system. It's also worth remembering that the reason postcodes exist is to make sorting and delivery of mail faster and more efficient — it would cost Royal Mail far more not to have the postcode database than it does to maintain it.

It does take resources to maintain the postcode system, but it also takes resources to maintain the Linux kernel, or the Apache HTTP server, or any other piece of open source software in widespread use today. If Royal Mail doesn't want the costs of maintaining the database, there are other ways of managing it. A more open postcode database would benefit the whole country, and harm only those who charge for access to a monopoly of information.

If we were free to choose our own postcode system, this wouldn't matter. If Royal Mail's licensing differentiated between mass-market direct mail companies and small citizen service web sites it would be less of an issue. As it is, we're stuck with a single system controlled by an organisation determined to make a profit from its monopoly whatever the cost to the rest of the country. This isn't good business, it's poor corporate citizenship and it's holding back innovation on the web. It must change.