First Crowdsourced, Open Data Address List Launches In the UK 33
The internet is a great place to search for some kinds of information; Amazon (or L.L. Bean, or Digi-Key, or any retailer, really) do their best to connect you with all the products in their databases, and for lots of other search topics, the usual handful of general purpose search engines can ferret out answers based on your keywords. Addresses are sometimes harder to search, but in the UK at least that might soon be much easier: An anonymous reader writes The London based startup and open data advocacy organization Open Addresses UK wants to change all of that by inviting the public to collect and validate housing addresses to build the biggest UK open address dataset ever. To do so, they launched UK's first open and free address list on Wednesday, calling on individuals and companies to crowdsource information."
What if you want the equivalent of an unlisted number, though?
Re: UK Post Office already does this (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, but they charge a lot for programmatic access to, or for offline lists.
A crowd sourced list gets around Royal Mail's intellectual property and makes this data freely available for anybody to use.
Re:UK Post Office already does this (Score:5, Informative)
The commercial arm of the Royal Mail (not PostOffice Ltd) own the intellectual property of the PAF (Postal Address File [wikipedia.org]) that has a strict data structure of how to store an address for verification purposes. See the PAF Digest PDF [royalmail.com] for a full 200 page specification of how to write a postal address.
important for orgs that process addresses and how to process data items like a "double dependent locality" and so on. many big UK companies totally fuck up addresses even though this is specified.
The main problem with this is that the Royal Mail was privitised so this publically funded data source has now been commercialised and the IPR owned by a company thanks to the tories.
Re: (Score:2)
The main problem with this is that the Royal Mail was privitised so this publically funded data source has now been commercialised and the IPR owned by a company thanks to the tories.
Thats not really any different to saying that the publicly funded infrastructure, such as the vans and physical buildings, have now been commercialised.
Its the Royal Mail which maintains the PAF and the postcode system, so why should the government get income from licensing it?
Re: (Score:2)
Not to intentionally defend the Tories, but this project also only exists thanks to the Tories:
http://alpha.openaddressesuk.o... [openaddressesuk.org]
"How are you funded now?
Our current funding comes from the Cabinet Officeâ(TM)s Release of Data Fund. This fund is administered by the Open Data User Group and agreed by the Public Sector Transparency Board."
Oh how they take with one hand and give with the other!
Unlisted Identity (Score:2)
Addresses will be collected. In fact a lot of addresses were available albeit not in an organized manner. The next thing could be the open list of identities and professions, .... well to reduce the marketing costs, of course and target ads better. However officers in law enforecement and spy agencies will not like that and will either force to unlist some of the addresses, or will take fake names and identities.
Somewhat similiar to google earth, where some areas are artificially blurred by the company whic
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They're only doing addresses by the looks, not names and addresses, so professions and so forth make no sense.
But most importantly it'd breach the Data Protection Act and be shut down with massive fines if it started bundling personal data like names of occupants along with addresses.
This is basically just a free competitor to the likes of Experian's QuickAddress service.
Web identifiers (Score:2)
Those things they plan to introduce -- web identifiers -- already exist:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/w... [openstreetmap.org]
Re: (Score:2)
seriously, this is different from openstreetmap... how ?
ok, so it's more limited (addresses only) and uk only.
adding the missing info in osm is a much better idea.
Unlisted numbers... (Score:4, Insightful)
What if you want the equivalent of an unlisted number, though?
Then you are thinking of something else, like the electoral role or exclusion from the phone book (which also includes addresses).
This is the equivalent of the Royal Mails Postcode Address File - matches locations to addresses, postcodes to streets, house numbers to postcodes etc. No names or occupants involved.
So there is no such thing as an unlisted address - its like BT releasing a list of all phone numbers without names of the people who you can call using them. Except having the address database is a damn sight more useful, as you don't deliver stuff to a phone number...
Re: (Score:2)
No, because there is no identifying information about you, so you have no right to tell a website to forget an address with no personal details involved.
The "Right to be forgotten" is not all encompassing, you dont simply have the right to tell a website to remove whatever data you wish to have removed - there are boundaries to what you can accomplish with it.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm glad BT don't list all working phone numbers, otherwise they would be getting spammed a lot more.
I expect we will see legal action from Royal Mail soon enough. Can't have competition for their post code database subscription service.
Absolutely not (Score:4, Insightful)
"Open Addresses UK Director Jeni Tennison states that addresses are an essential part of a national infrastructure. “They connect us to wider society and help us to access services. Everyone needs to be able to use addresses freely, which means they need to be open.”
No, not everyone does need to be able to use my address freely. In fact, they are explicitely restricted from doing so by various laws. My address is used and disclosed at a point of my choosing.
"On a more serious note, Wells explains that address data links together the digital world with the virtual, and by connecting these two worlds, better services can be given to everybody. When combined with and linked to other open data sets, allowing startup companies and developers access to this data will encourage the development of new goods and services, the organization states. When combined with and linked to other open data sets, allowing startup companies and developers access to this data will encourage the development of new goods and services, the organization states."
'Better' by who's definition? Startup companies - who on earth said I wanted to help them out?
Wells says that Google Maps could also use the open address data to improve the quality of their services. The open data can also inform devices to perform tasks with the data collected. Wells further explains that they keep the quality of the data high by using existing open, clean data sets that can help corroborate new data coming in.
Why should my life be lived in order to 'help out' the multi-billion dollar corporation that is Google? I already use as few of their services as possible. 'Inform devices' - which devices, and who says I want them to be informed?
The idea has no use cases put forward which benefit me, which allow for my consent, and in fact I believe an amount of this form of collection could actually be covered by Crown copyright laws as it is essentially duplicating the Electoral Roll.
Not with fourteen barge poles tied together would I touch this.
Re: (Score:2)
And for creating junk mail addressed to "The Occupier".
Re: (Score:1)
The junk mailers already have that ability though.
Re:Absolutely not (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to fail to understand the difference between a street address for a building and it's physical location (probably in OSGB36 coordinates) and that address being associated with one or more individuals.
In fact the Royal Mail already maintain such a database known as the Postcode Address File
http://www.poweredbypaf.com/en... [poweredbypaf.com]
An epic failure to understand what is being proposed on your behalf.
Re: (Score:3)
Another epic fail. The street address of a house say
29 Acacia Road
Nuttytown
NU5 5PD
and it's location either in lat/log or OSGB36 grid coordinates is not and never has been personal information.
Re: (Score:2)
No reason for this (Score:4, Interesting)
What possible reason is there for such a list, other than spam?
Re: (Score:2)
Navigation/route finding.
Re: (Score:1)
What possible reason is there for such a list, other than spam?
Address lookup by postcode on a web form. This is a very common use-case, but currently requires the site owner to pay for the Royal Mail address database.
I guess the idea with this is to reduce that cost involved, particularly for small businesses.