Parliament absolutely can, legally. The issue is that it’ll set a bad precedent that’ll get brought up by the buyer the next time the government want to privatise something.
Great, maybe they'll be more wary of taking advantage of this kind of blunder if they can get corrected.
You can pass the law, get sued and pay whatever the PAF is worth. But that's just.. fair? The govnerment spent 5 mio just for a survey concluding that it's impossible to recreate the PAF. So hundreds of millions sounds like a good deal.
If it has knock-on impacts in other areas, it's hard to say, but that's separate to the law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_incompatibility
As I point out, this isn’t “free” because it can invite consequences from other parties. But that’s a different domain to law.
If Royal Mail put the asset into a US subsidiary then US courts must protect it.
Regardless of what the UK domestic authorities say, very few entities would be willing to risk violating US copyright laws.
Inside the UK, if a law explicitly counteracts, say, an international treaty, the British courts MUST find in favour of British law.
This is true in theory but not in practice. If you’ve been sanctioned by the US then you won’t by able to get a bank account in the UK. Even if you’ve not violated any UK law.
The Americans can give a British bank an ultimatum between dealing in US dollars and dealing with a particular individual. Every bank will always choose the former.
Similarly anything with US assets is subject to the US court system any its interpretation of copyright. Naturally this means US companies need to obey its rules.
But also given the reach of copyright law, so do foreign companies that interact with US ones. Visa, Mastercard, Google, FedEx, and Stripe can’t do business with someone who openly violates US copyright.
So perhaps a local council using self hosted services could use nationalised data but that’s about it.
And in any case, my disclaimer already covered the bases you’re discussing:
> If it has knock-on impacts in other areas, it's hard to say, but that's separate to the law.
I’d hoped it was clear that I was referring to UK law but perhaps not.
Parliament might be the de jure authority on UK law, but in practice many other bodies have the de facto power to write laws that apply in the UK.
This has actually happened on multiple occasions: Brexit being one that removed European institutions’ right to set rules that the U.K. must comply with. It’s also an example of where this isn’t free: the government agreed to a bunch of rules right back because cutting ourselves off from Europe would have obliterated the economy.
Surely the PAF formed part of the sale price when privatising Royal Mail?
So if you removed it before selling (at a lower price), or you buy it outright after, is there really that much difference making it a profoundly stupid mistake?
To take it would likely require either lengthy court battles or legislation. Given the priorities of the Labour Party, the latter isn't likely to happen within the next 5 years (when they'd have to add it to their manifesto).
To include a postcode lookup on your website costs nearly £7000 per year.
Given how popular that is I don't see how it couldn't have formed part of the price.
Why not? Parliament has the ability to make whatever laws it wants, no?
There are no limits on parliamentary sovereignty, which is what the US Founding Fathers fixed with the US Constitution, but even that was the second attempt, after the failure of the Articles of Confederation, and the Bill of Rights came after the Constitution itself, which is why it is formed of amendments.
Not by default, at least in the US. The database has to actually be more than just a compilation. It's not a high bar to clear, but it's there. Europe and the UK have the "sweat of the brow" doctrine however.
It can be, but that has unknown long term effects. If you do this it shows everyone your government cannot be trusted and so other good ideas will not happen because people cannot trust the government. We probably do not agree on what is a good idea so I'm going to leave this vague - whatever your political side there is a good idea that is suddenly unworkable because the government cannot be trusted to hold their end of the deal.
How devastating. /s
If you benefit by paying politicians so you can 'steal' national assets then why shouldn't we go after some of those assets. We're not even talking about depriving then if the asset, only making a copy of it.
Taking it would be like taking back a Rolls Royce factory, BP oilfield or other formerly state owned asset.
The state could nationalise the asset in theory, but that’d involve leaving international treaties and causing foreign copyright issues.
I just checked the status of OS maps copyright and it looks like a Dumpster fire: