Royal Mail threat likely to close ernestmarples.org
The Royal Mail has sent cease-and-desist orders (via its lawyers) to Richard Pope and Harry Metcalfe, the web developers behind ernestmarples.org (which we’ve referred to before).
Basically, they’re saying that ernestmarples is accessing the RM’s postcodes-to-coordinates database without permission, and that their clients are suffering loss as a result, and so they should stop.
Read it all (including the letter) at http://ernestmarples.com/blog/?p=3.
Two immediate questions:
1) how can it be unauthorised to access a database that is publicly accessible through others? Though of course there may be lots of fine print in white on a white background in which you “agree” not to reuse the information for anything actually useful anywhere.
2) precisely how much, and where, is the loss that Royal Mail has suffered? Ernestmarples would never have bought a licence. The services that they scraped for it (which RM’s lawyers have demanded a list of) are free to the public.
Tom Watson is ever so slightly incandescent about this; if he were a light bulb you probably wouldn’t be able to buy him in the shops.
This is stupid: as Tom Watson points out, closing this service will also affect other services that are being offered. Not clever.
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- Costing ernestmarples (and free data) vs paid-for (11 October 2009; score: 59.87%)
- Naughty, very naughty: Ernest Marples frees the postcodes (11 July 2009; score: 57.17%)
- Seeing red (7 April 2006; score: 39.94%)
- In the Guardian: the mystery of the vanishing addresses (9 January 2009; score: 38.54%)
- Do you know where your postboxes are? (15 September 2009; score: 36.85%)
October 6th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Joss Smithson and Dan Hagon. Dan Hagon said: "@tom_watson is .. incandescent about this; if he were a light bulb u probably wouldn’t be able 2 buy him in the shops" http://bit.ly/495n4h [...]
October 7th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
There is down a Downing Street Petition asking the Prime Minister to encourage the Royal Mail to offer a free license for non-profit projects:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/nfppostcodes/
October 8th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Why should non-profit organisations be subsidised by commercial organisations and the public sector?
October 8th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
[...] has been covered elsewhere by the Open Rights Group, Tom Watson, The Guardian Free Our Data blog and Boing Boing. Since they’ve already done a stellar job of discussing the issues [...]
October 15th, 2009 at 7:02 am
If the comment from ‘otreps’ is in response to my comment, I am sorry but I haven’t seen all these articles about why non-profit organisations should get data for free whilst commercial and public sector organisations should have to pay. Please can I have some links to these articles especially if there is serious academic studies to back up these assertions.
I am not argueing against Free Our Data just asking what is the justification for non-profit organisations \ projects being treated differently.
October 15th, 2009 at 9:23 am
@Richard – you’re right, I think: it doesn’t make sense for “non-profit” or charitable organisations to get the licences for free while “commercial” organisations pay. The only difference tends to be whether one has shareholders. (Would The Guardian, owned by a company owned by a trust, qualify as a “non-profit” organisation?)
The analysis we have done demonstrates that making the data free to *everyone* brings wider economic benefits than the narrow ones of boosting one small part of a government-owned organisation.