USPS: ZIP Codes are “proprietary business information” | Hacker News Reader

USPS: ZIP Codes are “proprietary business information”

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188 pointsjoelgrus138 comments

The issue here is that their quote is in government-speak that not everyone can understand. Translated into plain English:

"proprietary business information" means "this nation's copyright and patent systems are horribly and possibly irrevocably broken and many government departments are so unaccountable they feel so entitled and lawless they care more about making their jobs easy than serving the people paying their salaries."

When you read it that way everything makes sense.

EDIT: many posts on whether the USPS is government or not. I hope we don't lose sight of the forest of bureaucracies large and entrenched enough to skirt accountability and twist IP laws in ways the Constitution never intended while focusing on that tree. That is, the details of its connection to the government don't change its behavior.

The USPS isn't a government department.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service

"The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office and U.S. Mail, is an independent agency of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution."

If the US constitution is how you're created, you're given a monopoly on delivering mail in the US, and you're governed by Congress, you're part of the US government.

Would you define the Federal Reserve as part of the government?

Yes.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm

As the nation's central bank, the Federal Reserve derives its authority from the Congress of the United States. It is considered an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by the Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms.

However, the Federal Reserve is subject to oversight by the Congress, which often reviews the Federal Reserve's activities and can alter its responsibilities by statute. Therefore, the Federal Reserve can be more accurately described as "independent within the government" rather than "independent of government."

The better question is, are the employees of the Fed under the employ of the US government.

Nationally chartered commercial banks are required to hold stock in the Federal Reserve Bank of their region; this entitles them to elect some of the members of the board of the regional Federal Reserve Bank. Thus the Federal Reserve system has both public and private aspects.[18][19][20][21] The U.S. Government receives all of the system's annual profits, after a statutory dividend of 6% on member banks' capital investment is paid, and an account surplus is maintained.

Yes, they are part of the fourth branch [0].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government

You're being pedantic. Since the 1970s, the USPS is supposed to be revenue-neutral, by law. This is a direct rebuttal to the simplistic "I already done paid for it with meh tax dollers!" argument that appears to be carrying the day in this discussion. The past history and current management structure of the postal service is completely irrelevant to the debate.

The only tax subsidy the USPS receives is to fund things like free mail for the blind, election mail, and other "public good" services. They charge for the zip code database because it's a product that can make them revenue (which they desperately need), and it is, in fact, a proprietary invention of the USPS.

You're being disingenous. Congress maintains not only their monopoly on first-class mail delivery, but also control over key financial decisions. I don't see a lot of private companies that provide Congress with authority over themselves

So, what's the problem with that, exactly?

It's not a problem. The argument is that if they're part of the US government, they're required to release the information requested under the Freedom Of Information Act. USPS is trying to make the case that they're a private business not connected to the US government (and hence, aren't required to comply with the FOIA), which clearly is not true.

It doesn't seem that clear to me. Especially considering the tax part. I'm thinking there's probably stuff the USPS knows that really shouldn't be public information.

It's a US government institution, sure. Arguing about that (or focusing on it) misses the real point about how they're different from a lot of government agencies, which has everything to do with why they're acting grabby about IP like a business.

As the Wikipedia article notes, since 1971 it's been a corporation-like independent agency that's essentially unsupported by taxes. Since then it was supposed to operate in the black and it did for a long time, until it got hit by increased competition in traditional delivery services, digital communications... and the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (which both keeps it from offering new "non-postal" services and gives it new obligations like prefunding healthcare obligations 75 years into the future).

I don't think treating zip or other geoinfo they've got as proprietary is a great idea, because it could be used to create a lot of value if it was let out on its own. But the value it has makes it a potential revenue source, and given the obligations and limited options they have, I can understand why they feel like they'd have to capture some of the value they've created.

Author of the blog post here. I completely agree with you; this is my best estimate of the situation as well.

I'm not a constitutional scholar, whatever that even means, but I've always wondered why the authority "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads" is interpreted as the authority to forcefully implement a monopoly on postal service (now, just a near-monopoly on first-class mail).

> I've always wondered why the authority "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads" is interpreted as the authority to forcefully implement a monopoly on postal service

Generally, all the powers in Art. I, Section 8 ("To raise armies", "To provide and maintain a navy", "To borrow money on the credit of the United States") are read that way, though the only one that has express exclusion language is the power to legislate over the national capital district.

Can no one else raise an army or navy? I suppose it depends on your definition of "army" and "navy." Borrowing money on the credit of the US seems like a pretty obvious intrinsic monopoly.

Which makes sense to me, or at least those do not ever enforce this patent on infringers…

I have had to do zip code to location lookups to find ( I think it's called the Great Circle Calculation ) "within x miles of $zip_code".

I found plenty of companies wiling to sell me the data, sell me updated data quarterly, or API that after testing did not have data change in over a month, though from what I know about zip codes, and for our application, missing a zip code was not the end of the world, I just picked another close one. When drawing a radius around a point, if the point is missing but with so many zip codes, there was aways one close by.

1) How can they sell this? They don't apparently own it. 2) Why not use ones of the many zip, lat, long, databases that I seem to remember being pretty easy to find?

There's some logic behind the zip codes and how they are dished out. Unlike IP that has BGP to find the best route from IP to IP, USPS has none of this, so i imagine this was like trying to solve that "Traveling salesman" quandary with constantly changing and unknown locations. They had to make a sort of zip code prefix that at least gets them to the county level.

Lot's of good data here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_code

This is like how telco's issues numbers, it was all well thought out ahead of time. You could get kinda dirty and run a loop from zip_code_1 to zip_code_1+1 with each one polling the USPS for a zip code lookup. You would have a pretty accurate database. At one "scrape" of data taking 5 seconds, in a month you would have your data. After that you would only have to test the gaps between numbers to see if new ones were added or just follow some usps page to keep up on new and deprecated zip codes.

There are too many sites that use geolocation with zip to not have this be a solved problem on the very cheap. Probably just another API, where in the future apps will just be lego like API's you copy and paste JS snippets to and from. :)

The USPS used to be a clear-cut government agency, but has been quasi-privatized. Congress cut its taxpayer funding, and directed it to run itself like a business, not like a public service. Accordingly, you are incorrect about who are the "people paying their salaries": the USPS has not received any taxpayer money since its funding was cut to zero in the early 1980s. It now funds itself like a business, by charging fees and, like any other business, exploiting intellectual property where the opportunity arises. In that sense it's more like a regulated utility, like Comcast or PG&E, having been privatized in all but name.

Ultimately whether it's a public service that should act in the public interest, or an organization that should be run as a business, is a policy decision that's up to Congress to decide. And Congress decided on the 2nd. Given that, exploiting the zipcode database as proprietary IP seems in line with the letter and the spirit of their (current) mandate.

> the USPS has not received any taxpayer money since its funding was cut to zero in the early 1980s.

Not quite true, its received public funding since then, but that's specifically tied to costs associated with, IIRC, overseas absentee ballots.

Yes, but that is payment for work done. At best, they are a government contractor.

They are, in fact, a government agency. Government agencies that are funded entirely through user fees -- which is what postage is -- aren't entirely uncommon. (Of course, given the way that it is funded in part by "loans" from the Treasury that are made without any indication that the Postal Service will ever have a business plan that enables them to be repaid, its kind of questionable to even put the Postal Service in the category of purely user-fee funded government agencies. Its really just a plain old regular tax-and-user-fee-funded government that has been cloaked in some misleading smoke-and-mirrors.)

No, they're an independent government agency. Federal agencies that survive on non-appropriated funds aren't uncommon, for example, The Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, U.S. Mint and several DoD NAFIs (e.g. the different exchanges and various MWR programs).

They do not pay taxes. They are also not subject to many regulations other businesses face, and of course they are more famous for not having to adhere to parking laws.

They are forced to prefund their pensions unlike other government agencies but like private companies.

the truth of their problem is that mail service is declining, stats show it at 213 billion in 2006 down to 160 billion letters in 2012. That is a major decline in revenue.

Even if the Post Office did not have to fund its pensions it loses billions of dollars a year. If they did not fund their pensions and those pensions ended up negative the tax payers would step in.

Also consider.

1. the Post Office when negotiating with its unions cannot factor in the operational costs of the contract. As in, they cannot factor in the impact of it in day to day expenditures versus revenue.

2. The Post Office also has 535 overseers, as in Congress who can stop them from closing unprofitable offices, distribution centers, and the like. They even like to interfere with vehicle purchases. Anecdote, I remember my Aunt and Cousin (both ran local offices) bemoaning the left hand drive Windstars they had to take.

3. The EU even requires member nations to open their markets to competition, the US does not permit direct competition in letter delivery.

4. They have to plead to raise stamp costs.

> They are forced to prefund their pensions unlike other government agencies but like private companies.

Which private company has to fund 75 years of pension plans? Can't say I've ever heard of a company being forced to prefund pensions for future employees not even yet born before learning about PAEA.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/nader230911.html

Also I wonder if you care to comment on the sabotage provision in PAEA which stipulates the PO can't engage in non-postal forms of revenue.

The USPS has the massive benefit of government-protected monopoly on first-class mail. Even if it's not a direct infusion of funds, it's a major subsidy.

Exactly. Try delivering your own mail through mailboxes and mail slots and see what happens.

This happens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company

Whether that's a net subsidy or anti-subsidy is an interesting question. They have both a monopoly and a fairly stringent mandate: they are required to deliver first-class mail to every mailing address in the United States (including very remote areas), six days a week, at prices that they can't set. The estimates I've seen are that the first-class mail mandate is a net money-loser, with pre-sorted bulk mail and premium services like Priority Mail the more successful products. So the USPS might actually be financially better off without this "subsidy". But Alaska and Montana senators would have a fit if rural communities lost mail service.

Indeed. We see what the market price for delivering a letter quickly across the country is: about $20 from Fedex. USPS can only charge 46 cents by law, the cheapest first-class mail service in the world.

You failed to mention Fedex does it much faster, has insurance and tracking. It's not apple-to-apple comparison.

The more than 40x price difference is not all about speed, insurance, and tracking. No private service would providing first class mail delivery without cutting off service to unprofitable rural areas or jacking up the price significantly. Or, more likely, both.

>No private service would providing first class mail delivery without cutting off service to unprofitable rural areas or jacking up the price significantly. Or, more likely, both.

I don't know how you can prove that, postal services worldwide have been a government run business until very recently, and are still kept as a monopoly even after being privatized. Fedex cannot ship your normal mail, they are not even allowed to do it.

As for your claim that private companies will not be going in unprofitable rural areas, well even the USPS does not go there anymore (or much less often) : http://m.wfpl.org/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com...

I live in Montana and don't think I've ever seen a package from FedEx or UPS. Both companies use USPS to do the final legs of the delivery that would be unprofitable for them to do.

> they are required to deliver first-class mail to every mailing address in the United States (including very remote areas)

Not even close. If you live out of town, you don't get a mailbox. You get a PO Box in the post office in the closest town.

I thought we needed the State to protect us from monopolies? There must be a certain amount of double-think that goes into this line of reasoning. But yeah, remove the monopoly on first-class mail and let them charge differently if they'd like. Let other services compete with them. It's unfair for those living in remote areas? Well, I guess everyone should be charged the same for real estate regardless of location to make it "fair."

The State goes after unregulated monopolies which abuse their powers.

It's always been a mix of public/private since Benjamin Franklin won the contract to deliver mail between the colonies. Perhaps more public than private but the USPS history is fascinatingly complex.

> Congress cut its taxpayer funding, and directed it to run itself like a business, not like a public service.

Not really. Congress forced the PO to run itself like no other business or government entity with the goal of ruining it. The 109th Congress wanted to promote the belief government can't do anything efficiently. It was called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act and intentionally places huge burdens on the USPS which no other business has. Without those, estimates show the PO would still be hurting, but no where near its current state. So Bush can say "Mission Accomplished" about one thing and be right about it.

While it is true the USPS has requirements that no other business has, it also has benefits that no other business has. These include, but are not limited to:

* A box for its use at every residence in the United States

* A federal monopoly; it is unlawful for any company to carry a letter in the United States and charge a similar price to USPS rates. See here: http://about.usps.com/publications/pub542/welcome.htm

> * A box for its use at every residence in the United States

There are plenty of places that don't have a box. That box is paid for privately and not required.

> A federal monopoly; it is unlawful for any company to carry a letter in the United States and charge a similar price to USPS rates.

You got that wrong, see here: http://about.usps.com/publications/pub542/pub542_ch1_001.htm...

> * A box for its use at every residence in the United States

Not even close. I've lived many places without a box. If you're too expensive to deliver to, you don't get a box and you have to drive to the nearest post office and pick up your mail yourself. That's what a PO Box is.

Businesses aren't subject to FOIAs. If they're a business, why did they even respond? Given that they have responded, they are not a private business (of course). The USPS response here is shameful and we (Americans) should change it!

Did you even read my post? I said they are nominally a government agency (therefore liable for FOIAs), but have been directed by Congress to operate as a business, not to operate as public servants. Therefore it's not surprising that they exploit proprietary IP as if they were a business, since these are precisely the instructions they were given.

Assuming by "the people paying their salaries" you mean "taxpayers", then you're incorrectly assuming that USPS is paid for by taxpayers. It isn't - it's got to pay its own way by selling goods and services. In that respect it's a lot more like a business.

So your translation of "proprietary business information" is erroneous. A more accurate one would be, "Shit we ain't giving away for free. This ain't no charity, bub."

USPS has maintained a substantial deficit for some time. It is, therefore, subsidized by taxpayers.

    The USPS lost US$ 15.9 billion in 2012, and its revenue was US$ 65.2 billion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service

And this leads down the rabbit hole into the argument about Congress forcing USPS to advance-fund its pensions in a way no other government agency is required to, and which many argue is A) the source of practically all of the deficit, and B) was a deliberate move by members of Congress who wanted the USPS to become money-losing so as to make a stronger case for privatizing it.

Which, when you think about it, makes no sense at all.

If running a postal service that reaches all of the country is a money losing proposition, that's a terrible reason to privatize it, if you think it's in the national benefit to have a postal service.

FedEx and UPS put lots of money behind forcing the USPS to pre-fund union pensions. The goal was to both weaken the postal service, which was trying to move into "fast" shipments (1-2 day vs. the usual week+), and demonstrate that unions were bad for businesses in the delivery industry.

The American Postal Workers Union is against the law that requires USPS to pre-fund pensions.

http://www.apwu.org/news/webart/2011/11-015-prcletter-paea_r...

I don't see how this is relevant.

He said: "The goal was to both weaken the postal service, which was trying to move into "fast" shipments (1-2 day vs. the usual week+), and demonstrate that unions were bad for businesses in the delivery industry."

I am pointing out that the unions hate the law because they see how terrible it is.

The unions opinion doesn't matter. The only thing people know about the situation or will remember is "the union took all the money."

Of course it is terrible for the unions. It exposes the true cost of pensions which will weaken their position in future negotiations.

It is in the union's best interest to hide the cost of the pensions for as long as possible, with the likely result of taxpayers funding pensions.

Generally the allegation is that there are two groups who want the post office privatized:

1. Hard-line libertarians who argue that, since a post office is neither a national defense nor a means of enforcing contracts, it is beyond the scope of government and thus doomed to fail so long as it is run by government, and

2. Private entities who compete with the post office on package delivery, and would like to see that competition reduced by demonstrating how much more "efficient" (i.e., profitable) they are than a government-run delivery service.

>If running a postal service that reaches all of the country is a money losing proposition, that's a terrible reason to privatize it, if you think it's in the national benefit to have a postal service.

Your analysis assumes the public implementation is equivalent with a private one.

The reality is that without the enforced monopoly of the USPS and the Congress to protect it, a private business would be profitable.

They'd also charge more to achieve it.

But that's Capitalism, and by all means mail is most likely artificially priced far below what the market would naturally support.

Both true, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out what (I think) is the bigger point -- UPS and FedEx couldn't deliver a package to every doorstep for flat price of a stamp.

This wouldn't necessarily mean that they'd raise prices across the board, but for some residences, it would almost certainly require more than $0.42 (or whatever it is now) to deliver to.

My uncle owns over 2,000 mountainy acres in an extremely rural area. Mail to his house takes his postman literally a half an hour out of his way, through treacherous (but paved, sort of) roads, and which is impossible to deliver to in a snow storm. Still, it only takes the cost of a single stamp for me to send him a letter.

Him being a nice guy though, has an arrangement with the local post office (or maybe just the postman, I don't know how official or allowed it is) where they suspend junk mail until something legit comes in so that they don't have to make erroneous trips except for when he actually has a package. If he happens to be in town and hasn't received mail, he'll swing by the post office and pick his mail up there.

I think it is reasonably clear that anyone advocating privatizing mail is going to have to address the issue of the cost of delivery, either by some kind of subsidization by the government (not necessarily federal.. for example it could be done at the county level to promote people living there) or allowing companies to charge appropriately.

For OP: here's a commercial source, but read the disclaimers and ToS:

http://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/

For all, background info on the USPS budget/deficit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/opinion/nocera-its-d-day-f...

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-872T

Imagine for a moment working for a company that had had been in business for 220+ years, had policy and procedure manuals that reflected every year of the history, had thousands of physical locations, delivered to millions of locations many times per week, and had 535 people on the board of directors (in the sense of trying to micro-manage whatever they felt like sticking their oar into.)

I find it somewhat amazing that the USPS can still deliver mail across the country for less than 50 cents, let alone all the other stuff they can handle - ever been shipped a hive of bees by mail? It's in the Domestic Mail Manual, under Bees http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/601.htm

I am amazed at the OP! Just search google for zip code database. The first result is the link from parent post that gives you a free list of all zip codes, and primary cities they are associated with, plus a ton of other data. How on earth did this even get to a freedom of information request? And how did this end up on the front page of HN?

Playing devil's advocate...

By the same measure, should we not be outraged by having to pay postage?

Wouldn't the postal employees that created the Zipcode database be the same class of postal employee that deliver the mail?

Canada Post is currently trying to assert a similar ownership over our postal codes. See http://geocoder.ca/?sued=1 or http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canada-post-sues-over-post... for more details.

Really messed up. Geocoder.ca crowd-sourced a database of Postal Code -> lat/long information, and have been giving it away for years. Even some government organizations use their data, and yet our postal service is trying to shut them down to drive customers towards their $5,000/year + many strings attached product.

That's beyond idiotic. He claims they further went on to sue him personally on the grounds that "postal code" is a trademark.

1: http://eruci.com/2013/04/23/k2c-1n5/

The brazilian postal service claimed ownership of our postal codes a few years ago... Except that by our laws, nobody can claim ownership of data (you can't copyright, patent or trademark it). But the State has no reason to care about such mundane things, like laws.

By the way, here it's about $2,000/year, and if you sign the contract, you agree that the postal service owns the data. Or you can look at the internet for somebody that published it for free, and use it legally without a contract.

I'd personally be a little happier if people besides the post office stopped using ZIP codes.

Basically, ZIP codes are not maps. ZIP codes are (collections of) delivery routes. You can then reverse engineer a map more-or-less from the collections of addresses in a ZIP code, but it's messy and not necessarily meaningful.

If post offices were as plentiful as they are in (say) Manhattan, ZIP codes are a good proxy for location. If you live outside a major city, not so much. My parents live about 15 miles from the post office from which their ZIP code derives; my house used to be about a half mile from its post office, but that one was shut down (for mail delivery -- still exists for PO boxes), so now I'm attached to a ZIP code for the post office two towns over.

This matters, because if you do any sort of map-business off of ZIP codes, instead of political boundaries, the results are crap.

So death to ZIP codes.

I agree, but I think they remain in use just because most people happen to know their own zip code (from using it in mailing addresses).

There is an alternate system that's completely public-domain, maintained by a proper government agency, and actually intended for spatial division of U.S. territory in a way that's useful for grouping populations: the U.S. Census Bureau's census tracts. However these are somewhat newer (they didn't cover the whole U.S. until the 2000 census), people don't have their own census tract # memorized off the top of their head, and there seems to be less infrastructure & software built to use them outside of GIS people using actual census data.

I ran into this problem a lot when dealing with US-wide 911 service (for VoIP). Companies would just assume that if they have a mailing address for you, you're set, or worst case, go off the ZIP code to determine where to direct calls. Dealing with upstate NY was such a pain due to this.

Unfortunately, I can't see moving away from ZIP codes. The 4-digit extension is too hard for anyone to memorize. If they had just added a 1 or 2 letter extension, you might be able to get people to sometimes know it, and then they could fill a dual-role as a geolocator as well.

I live about 10 miles from the post office whose zip code my house is attached to. I choose to get my mail delivered to a PO Box... at the post office a mile and a half from my house whose zip code I am not attached to. If I were to actually go from my house to my post office I would have to drive past two post offices. When delivery trucks or repairmen come to my house I always mentally add 15-20 minutes to when they say they will be there because they assume, based on my zip code, where I live. So yes, the results are utter crap.

http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles2013/main - Select ZIP code tabulation areas from the dropdown.

They're not perfect, but they're almost definitely good enough for the author's purposes.

More info on how the Census Bureau creates them: http://www.census.gov/geo/reference/zctas.html (they take a surprisingly circuitous route)

Exactly what I was thinking. There are a gazillion (count 'em) ways to get around this "data product" BS. USDA statistics would work, too.

This is weird, I just read a random article [1] about a guy getting sued for publishing some banking public routing numbers. The article writer then jokingly said: "This argument is like the Post Office suing you for posting a list of zip codes."

[1] http://www.popehat.com/2013/11/05/fine-those-routing-numbers...

Awesome story. Thanks for the link.

Zip codes make my life hell on a daily basis. The problem is essentially that the USPS does not design topological zipcode polygons. All they do is maintain a set of centroids, plus an assignment to a set of lines representing street segments (which they charge for).

This would be fine, if it was not for the fact that pretty much everyone who wants to use zip codes needs them in a topologically valid polygon format. This is a problem because roads change all the time, and this makes zip codes terribly unstable. Also, there are many zip codes that are really just points (a bit of an oversimplification, but military bases, prisons, schools, etc. often cause huge problems).

Census tracts are much more stable (topologically valid and only change every 10 years). Unfortunately, most people don't know which census tract they live in, so zips prevail. I have built several geocoding algorithms, and it always comes down to the data being the big PITA. What ends up happening, unfortunately, is that private companies pick up the slack and create topological zip codes (with high price tags).

Double unfortunately, every company has a different methodology in creating these polygons, costing everyone who uses them big money, on top of the licensing fees. The USPS could easily produce a standard set of polygons for an extra couple grand a year in labor and save the industry millions. I cannot get into much detail, but I know this issue quite intimately.

random question, but shouldn't we task the us federal map-making agencies with this? like the USGS or some such? I agree with you position that having multiple private sector entities do it seems inefficient. presumably, the usps could also license/use the whatever was built by the usgs. and congress could make sure there is no bs with the ip of the zip database.

Similar issues plagued the UK postal code databases. So much so that Wikileaks eventually leaked the database

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/UK_government_database_of_all_1,84...

I'm not sure if things have improved since, but it's probably not going to get better now that Royal Mail is 48% private.

There is a pretty good effort to reverse engineer it all:

http://www.freethepostcode.org/

Edit: actual dataset here: http://www.freepostcodes.org.uk/ - link above wrong.

It doesn't look like it's been updated in a while, and many of the links are busted :(

Sorry wrong site. Have updated link!

It plagued and still plagues. The Royal Mail is ruthless when it comes to IP of UK's post codes (read US zip code). Every "little guy" who dare tryed come up with ways around it were and still are crushed with C&D or plain old take downs followed be a gagging order. Myself included.

Any more insight in to your case?

Here's another list of Zipcodes:

http://www.zippopotam.us

Wait, USPS is a privately owned entity? If not, aren't products of government entities public by default? Therefore, any proprietary information is owned by the public, isn't it?

Or did I completely misunderstand the whole thing?

Tell that to the NSA. They just Cease&Desist'd on intellectual property grounds someone who made a satirical t-shirt using their logo.

Things can be in the public domain, but have restricted usage - example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_insignia#Usage

Currently, it's kind of semi-privatized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Reorganization_Act

But Congress still has oversight over it, and it's legally obligated to service all Americans.

There are some people who think we should go further, and fully privatize it: http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/usps

Reading about that now. I always thought they were 'federal employees', because it was a federal service.

Author thinks he needs the ZIP code database that is "updated daily," but he provides no reason for this and he's not willing to pay for it. Looks like he's the one being unreasonable here; ZIP codes are a solved problem.

Why should he pay for something that is a product of the federal government? It's already paid for, by the salaries of those who maintain the data, which would be maintained anyway since its required for USPS operations.

The USPS is not a government agency nor are its employees paid by the government.

Presumably those salaries were paid with the expectation that some of that money would be recuperated through private sales. I guess it sort of makes sense that only businesses who use the information have to pay, instead of making every taxpayer bear the burden.

Taxpayers don't bear the burden. Postage purchasers do. If you paid for postage, the zipcode database was necessary for delivery of your item. Selling the data to other companies is just another way they're trying to monetize the data.

Even more unreasonable: His original reason for wanting the list of zipcodes was to correlate the zip codes of some health inspections in some county in Oregon to a specific location. Undoubtedly, these health inspections are older than one day, and therefore using two year old data from the census would probably provide the same accuracy as the zipcodes updated daily.

Seems like the author is going out of his way to create controversy. He can't figure out the zip codes in one county in Oregon without help from the post office? I doubt the restaurants that report the zip codes have any official assistance.

It is certainly lame to lock the data behind exorbitant fees, but I agree with you. Considering how he intends to use the data, any of the freely available lists online would be good enough.

The point is that this is extremely useful public data. Since so many things in daily life besides just shipping require an address, this information should really be in the commons.

Author here. Yep, it's part of the country's infrastructure. This kind of restriction adds costs in a million little ways.

One might argue that by making a blog post on any subject, no matter what its importance to the author, is "going out of his way to create controversy". In addition, his post never states that he is unable to "figure out the zip codes", it only describes the policy and practice of the USPS.

This is what the USPS says, but it might not be the final answer. If the requester is in the 9th Circuit (one of AK, AZ, CA, GU, HI, ID, MP, MT, NV, OR, WA) and especially if the requester is in the Northern District of California (SF Bay Area), there are court cases that may be relevant.

Doug Carlson[1] requested basic data about post offices and post office boxes (location, hours, etc.), and the USPS claimed the information was commercial and therefore exempt from FOIA.

In at least the case of the post offices, it went to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in his favor [2], meaning that the law in the Ninth Circuit may not be on the USPS's side. (In the case of disclosing the locations of mailboxes, the USPS claimed a FOIA exemption based on the potential for using knowledge of mailbox locations to distribute chemical and biological agents, but it lost to Carlson in the Northern District of California [3]).

I would encourage the requester to take the next step in a denied FOIA request and file a timely appeal with the USPS general counsel [4]. I'm not a lawyer, but you could probably find one who could write a convincing letter based on the current caselaw in the 9th circuit. Or try Doug Carlson himself, as his contact details are part of the public record [5].

[1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/PROFILE-Doug-Carlson-S...

[2] http://www.leagle.com/decision/20071627504F3d1123_11592

[3] Carlson v. USPS, No. C-02-05471, 2005 WL 756573, at *6-7 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 31, 2005) (concluding that disclosure of data pertaining to mailbox locations would not risk use of postal system to distribute biological or chemical agents because agency failed to demonstrate that such data actually could be used to determine mail collection routes). Found on p.206-207 of http://www.justice.gov/oip/foia_guide09/exemption2.pdf.

[4] http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/foia/faq.htm#H10

[5] http://prc.gov/prc-pages/library/dockets.aspx?activeview=Sum...

Datasets:

  - United States Census Bureau TIGER
  - GeoNames data dumps
  - You can pay to be sent data files from the USPS (AIS)

Welcome to the wonderful world of public, semi-public, and private datasets. It is an interesting niche, and the ability to find them can give you a competitive advantage (e.g. machine learning datasets).

This reminded me a case in Malaysia, were local devs were trying to get fastest public transport traveling problem solved on mobile app, but they couldn't get bus schedules even on the end points of the routes as it is "confidential information". Literally no one except probably bus drivers or daily travelers would know when the bus leaves/arrives, personally I failed to find a single timetable myself, so usually you just stand there for 30-60 minutes waiting for the next bus to arrive. Coming from Lithuania it was big challenge to understand such as mindset and business logic as here you can snap QR code in bus stop and see real time traffic information that actually encourages you to hop on the public transport.

Eventually USPS will have to share all that information or someone will come up with alternative to ZIP code numbering that is constant and public...

So the government can C&D anyone who uses their proprietary business information (like UPS or Fedex) without paying royalties? Sounds great! Another victory for the proletariat!

Canada Post considers Canadian Postal Codes to be copyrighted information as well. A Canadian "geographic data" company (Geolytica Inc.) has been sued for copyright infringement[0].

[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canada-post-sues-over-post... That link is from April 2012, not sure where the case went after that.

I understand that the post is more about the USPS holding onto something seemingly trivial. Kinda like when we tell google to block out certain places of security. But we already have so many ways to get around it, like going there and taking a picture, or renting a plane, who knows. Or the Streisand Effect kicks in and everything is a mess.

At any rate, I have had to do a lot with zip codes in the past, long before anything like an API was a common term let alone something every company was happy to let you hook into and use their services. Heck, this was back when it costs a few grand to take CC's on a website and had to deal with that awful Authorienet API. That used to be thought of as crazy talk. Now we have amazing stuff like this: http://www.geonames.org

According to the USPS website, API usage is free here: https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/list-of-apis.ht...

One of the API's relates to zip codes.

Looks like USPS API data is free and usable only for package shipping. Not that I bet they would notice. At any rate, this seems to be a great start with a great API recommendation: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7129313/zip-code-lookup-a...

Sorry to keep replying, I don't have an edit button for some reason. This one is cool too: http://api.zippopotam.us/us/ma/belmont

I found a town called Bakersfield that has more than one zip fro the town, it does JSON back with more data than I thought would be part of free plan.

For some reason I could not get "san_francisco","san-francisco", "sanfrancisco", or "sf" to work.

http://api.zippopotam.us/us/ca/san%20francisco

if you take a closer look you'll notice that the usps api takes a USERID as an xml parameter so it is not free.

Author of the blog post here.

Access to the API isn't automatic. You have to apply, which I did, and then was turned down. They only grant access if you're using the info to ship packages via the USPS. I was completely honest that I wanted the data to build open-government apps of different kinds, and they declined me.

And if you read the full article, there's a solution to the problem from the census bureau....

Of course the author can't use that because it's not updated daily, like FOIA'ing the ZIP codes would get you daily updates anyway...

This reminds me of when developers were trying to create public transport related apps for Australia (about 4 years ago) and were told that using the timetable information would be copyright infringement [1].

I'm pretty sure it was worked out in the end as apps are now available with that info, but it seemed absolutely ridiculous at the time that public information, for a public service wasn't in the public domain.

[1]: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/03/05/1235842537210.html

I wasn't really aware that zip codes change much..

As far as I am aware, if I put in slightly the wrong zip code (neighboring one) but the right address, I'll still will get the package.

I think that if you send a letter to say, Washington St., Boston MA, (of which there are several) you'd better have the correct zip code.

Yeah, I am used to small communities or a grid systems in dense population, like 305 E 900 N #42

Your point is completely valid in these other contexts though.

The USPS is often pretty good at getting mis-addressed mail to people anyway, in general.

There's an old joke about a letter addressed to

    Wood
    John
    Massachusetts

To whom was it delivered? Turn your monitor over:

    6666-0Ɩ8Ɩ0 ∀W 'ɹǝʌopu∀
    ʎɹǝʌᴉlǝp lɐɹǝuǝפ
    pooʍɹǝpu∩ uɥoſ

Utahn?

I wonder where $3k/yr number came from. This is a price for "Z4Change Product" product which "Provides mailers the information necessary to create an application that would facilitate frequent and cost-effective processing for updating very large computerized mailing lists for automation compatibility and improved deliverability."

Is this so necessary for mapping health inspections data? USPS has more fitting products priced less.

It's the only data they'd offer me which contains the complete list of zip codes mapped to cities.

I urge you to go to this page [1] and have a look at what other products are and what information they provide.

[1] https://www.usps.com/business/address-information-systems.ht...

http://www.geonames.org/ has free geo data that includes zip codes.

Similar in New Zealand, although NZ Post is a "state owned enterprise" rather than a government agency.

I understand the OP's pain. But there's an easy solution that many of us that deal with mailings and US addresses use. Go buy a Address Verification/CASS Processing CD from Melissa Data or a similar company. Or pay a small fee for a limited list in your area.

I don't think USPS has to share that info with anyone. I faced the same problem in past with Indian Zip Codes.

Talk about England and you have much bigger problem. The ownership of Pincodes in England is with the Queen and hence no one can really use it without her permission. :P

Wasn't loading for me:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.we...

Am I missing something here that prevents the use of the Google Maps API for postal code look ups[1]?

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/

There is Google's terms of service for one.

There was a post on HN a while ago explaining why people should be building / using alternatives to google for geo stuff. The largest reason being that MANY uses are against the TOS of the google geocoding API. Particularly, I think, anything that's not user-facing and free/freely available. I can't seem to dig up a link, but a the case is made here (though not as well): http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/FAQ#Why_don.27t_you_just_...

EDIT: found it http://petewarden.com/2013/09/09/why-you-should-stop-piratin...

I recall that article about the Data Science Toolkit. Thanks.

They haven't enforced protecting their "proprietary business information" in the past, so I doubt this can hold up in court.

It other news, I think the USPS should double their rates for stamps. Less spam in my mailbox, and a push for a greener planet.

Well, we'll always have latitude and longitude.

Someone should just create an open source project, host that on Github and call it a day. This is disgusting.

http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/

That's what I'd like to do. I wrote this in my FOIA request: that my intent is to take the data and make it as widely available as possible.

Is there no list online for this?

This is the one I've used in the past:

http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/geolite/

have you tried openstreetmaps or just using the google maps API?

Well, clearly I don't belong here because I don't own my address.

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