[OSM-talk] UK post box data

[David Earl]

On 05/07/2008 14:36, Tom Taylor wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I recently made a Freedom of Information Act request for the location  
> of every UK post box. Royal Mail responded with a 1600 page PDF  
> containing their info.
> 
> http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/location_of_every_post_box_that
> 
> I did some parsing of the PDF, and it seems that of the 114,000 post  
> boxes in the UK, 50599 seem to have valid postcode data.
> 
> I'm currently geocoding these postcodes using Yahoo's service, and  
> wondered if the resulting longitudes and latitudes would be of  
> interest to OSM and could be integrated. I'm not entirely clear on the  
> licensing of it. Can anyone clarify?

I rather think this is infringing two copyrights: the database copyright 
in the original data and perhaps more crucially the database copyright 
in the geocoder for the postcodes which is presumably licensed by Yahoo 
from the Royal Mail - in effect you are reproducing a big chunk of that 
database by doing this.

I don't think the fact that they are obliged to give you the data under 
FoI gives you any additional rights over the data in respect of the 
copyright that exists on the database you were given.

David