They must be spending a steady amount on PR. The news seems perfectly constructed for the obligatory quote from their founder when in this case the answer isn't their system, but just that Royal Mail use the correct identifier: the post-code and the identifying information for the property (building name and/or building number as well as company name if applicable).
I've not seen any articles discussing how awful they are -- The idea of copyrighting and privatising the concept of "position" should be rejected at every opportunity.
Now if he said that the customer service was amazing, it would be legitimate to expect some level of criticism response.
We released WhatFreeWords last week and it was taken down after 4 days.
It is back up now at https://whatfreewords.org/ but who knows for how long.
You can read their DMCA notice to our previous hosting at https://whatfreewords.org/download/dmca-20190917.pdf
Once they've submitted a DMCA notice, the hosting company has to take it down within 2 days unless you file a counter-notice, which has to personally identify you and be signed "on penalty of perjury".
None of the DMCA process has anything to do with whether the claimant has a legitimate copyright claim over the work.
Terms of service violation or something maybe.
As a reminder, there is a similar free solution that tries to solve the same problem as what3words from a different angle:
Google Maps shows these today. And you can search Google or Maps for plusCodes.
> The 11-digit codes [...] are hard to memorise and a single mistyped digit would send a courier to the wrong address.
The plus codes FAQ [1] mentions that they thought checksums weren't important for a couple of reasons:
* Not needed for codes that are copy pasted rather than typed or written
* Mistyped codes will be "obviously wrong" due to referring to an unrelated area
I'm not too convinced by the rationale, as playing around on Google Maps shows a typo of one digit can at least sometimes produce another valid code not too far away. And even if typoed codes were always obviously wrong, it's not clear that a computer would recognize incorrect but valid codes as well as a human.
[1] https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/master/FAQ...
what3words is so problematic and really isn't the solution to this problem.
It says nothing about product, traction or anything else. It only proves journalists and editors can be or already have been bought.
Google “PR agency London”. Email the top five asking for a price-per-mention, and get offers back in the region of £500 a pop. Sign a contract. Talk about how you were featured on the BBC.
It might also just be familiarity from the writer, i.e. journalist writing article about inexact nature of post codes -> remembers the article he/she wrote or read about what3words -> figures that's a good alternative so contacts the company for comment.