Royal dog in the manger

I know that Royal Mail is a sort-of commercial entity (well, it’s at least partially a limited company), and I realise that having belatedly realised how useful postcodes are in an information-rich and hence information-dependent society they’re only doing what anyone would do when they act to prevent the use of the postcode database they inherited from more socially enlightened days without agreement of a substantial license fee. I also realise that its maintenance costs time, money and some expertise. I also realise that operating a system that circumvents the protection they’ve placed on the data will trigger cease-and-desist letters, however smartly done.

On the other hand, it is undoubtedly in the national interest for this data to be more widely available, especially when we consider the potential for services that might cater for the less-privileged rather than to big business budgets. I’d vote for a publicly-owned Royal Mail with publicly-accessible postcode-to-geocode data; that might be the fairest bargain to strike given that Royal Mail sells services based around the data it keeps about us all, without our conscious agreement.