Naughty, very naughty: Ernest Marples frees the postcodes
An interesting new site – ernestmarples.com/ – is trying to make postcodes free.
The people behind it (the whois details tell you that it’s registered to a location in SW1A 1AA, which happens to be Buckingham Palace) are Harry Metcalfe and Richard Pope.
They insist, when asked the question of “where does the data come from?” that
We’re not saying. But, just to be clear: we don’t hold a copy of the postcode database ourselves, neither in complete form nor as part of a cache.
But their aim is clear enough:
Post codes are really useful, but the powers that be keep them closed unless you have loads of money to pay for them. Which makes it hard to build useful websites (and that makes Ernest sad).
So we are setting them free and using them to run PlanningAlerts.com and Jobcentre Pro Plus. We’re doing the same as everyone’s being doing for years, but just being open about it.
Hopefully the Government and Royal Mail will realise the value of this service and license us to offer it officially and for free. If not, and this website gets shut down, we’ll close the websites we’ve made that make use of this site’s lookup service. Permanently.
There’s a long list of people who have supported it. We’ll add our voice. The Free Our Data campaign thinks it’s a good idea to make postcodes freely available.
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- In the Guardian: people are doing it for themselves (2 November 2006; score: 24.28%)
- Postcodes to be free? But which ones? (9 December 2009; score: 23.99%)
- In the Guardian: what happens to the Postcode Address File in a Royal Mail split ownership? (9 March 2009; score: 19.56%)
- Postcodes: local authorities vs Royal Mail still arguing; want to sign a petition? (24 May 2007; score: 14.82%)
- Norwegian mapping authority frees up maps (14 November 2009; score: 14.24%)
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:25 am
If I go to Google Maps, enter a postcode, then paste the following line of Javascript into the address bar and Enter, I get the latitude and longitude of the centre of the map (I assume this is the ‘centre’ of the postcode.
javascript:void(prompt(”,gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));
(from http://distlib.blogs.com/distlib/2007/06/latlong_bookmar.html)
I can’t see any substantive difference between what ernestmarples.com are doing and what Google offers: if the Royal Mail goes after ernestmarples.com then I assume that they would have to go after Google, and I know who my money would be on.
Perhaps someone could write a webservice that we can all offer using Google Maps if ernestmarples.com gets taken down.
July 28th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
[...] of support. I’ve even been hugged. We’ve been written about by Guardian Tech and FreeOurData. The site has served lots and lots of requests to people doing useful [...]
August 9th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
[...] Naughty, very naughty: Ernest Marples frees the postcodes (Free Our Data: the blog) A guerrilla attempt to free UK postcode data. Free online service to convert postcodes to longitude and latitude. (tags: latlong geotag postcode open data free uk location locative) [...]
October 5th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
[...] “We’re doing the same as everyone’s being doing for years, but just being open about it,” they said at the time of launch earlier this year. [...]