Number 10 don’t seem to have noticed, but we have — and it’s so important that every right-thinking person in the land responds. We’ve got to tell the Ordnance Survey what we think — if we don’t, only incumbent commercial interests will respond. And if that happens, you can bet that whatever we end up with will be very similar to the status quo.

This opportunity won’t come around again for a long while. Please take a moment, and use our online form to send your thoughts to the Ordnance Survey.

Don’t forget to ask your friends to do the same!

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to encourage the Royal Mail to offer a free postcode database to non-profit and community websites.”

Details of Petition:

“Royal Mail today sent a ‘cease and desist’ letter to Ernest Marples Ltd, the organisation providing a post code API allowing social projects to use post code searches. Because of this, many useful websites are no longer functioning, including PlanningAlerts.com, Job Centre Pro Plus and Healthware. We therefore are asking the Prime Minister to encourage to Royal Mail to offer a second free license for non-profit projects of this nature who otherwise could not afford to pay for a license, so they can offer useful location-based services for their users.”

We, of course, eagerly signed up — as did many others. The petition got enough signatures to get a response from Number 10, which has just been issued. Except… it’s not really a response. In that a respond should — well — respond to the points raised, which this one doesn’t.

Instead, we have a history lesson. It’s quite interesting (although not new to us) but it doesn’t address any of the problems raised. It doesn’t talk about the value of data or the importance of PAF or Postzon. It doesn’t even mention open data, or citizen-led web services.

Number 10 has accepted responsibility for liberating public data. They’ve appointed Tim Berners-Lee. It’s the attention that Number 10 have given this issue that led to the launch of data.gov.uk yesterday. And it’s Number 10’s clout that we’ll need to liberate data that’s currently caught up in a web of private commercial interests and archaic bureaucracies.

And yet, on the back of people’s attempts to fix the problem, and specifically given an opportunity to do something at a time when people are engaged, listening and excited, we get the brush-off. A statement containing a lot of words that don’t really say anything.

I’m going to respond to the last two paragraphs specifically.

Postcomm has previously undertaken a public consultation reviewing how the PAF was managed. The consultation started in 2006 and finished in 2007. Postcomm took all the diverse uses of the PAF into account before reaching its decision in 2007…

Ah yes. The hallowed consultation. The one where they considered the diverse uses that the everyone who pays for PAF data puts it to. Is too much to say that a group of companies, making good money from PAF data, might have a vested interest in keeping it locked up behind a paywall? Is it any surprise that the PAF Advisory Board, containing a grand total of zero representatives of the third sector, might not represent our interests?

…announcing more safeguards for the management of the address information held in the PAF with the aim of making sure that the PAF is maintained properly and made available on fair and reasonable terms.

Rubbish. PAF is manifestly not available on fair and reasonable terms.

It is not fair or reasonable to ask tiny organisations, working for social good, to stump up thousands of pounds a year to use data that that’s as much a part of our national infrastructure as roads and telephone lines.

Royal Mail currently charge a £750 data delivery fee — in addition to the licence fee — if you elect to obtain PAF via a download. On what planet is it fair or reasonable to charge £750 for a download?

If any PAF user or stakeholder feels that Royal Mail is not complying with the terms of section 116 of the PSA 2000 or Condition 22 of its licence, they can either raise concerns direct with the company or with Postcomm. Postcomm would consider the merits of any such concerns in the light of its statutory duties.

Again — this entirely misses the point. No one has accused Royal Mail of not complying with its licence. The problem isn’t that Royal Mail isn’t complying to its licence terms — I’m sure it is — the problem is that its licence doesn’t contain the right terms in the first place.

The problem is that the licence was formed to suit industry. To suit people who resell PAF data, and who use it to save money and do business. And that’s fine — I have no problem with industry, commercialism or using public data to make a profit.

But this approach belongs to a different age. One where the only people who needed postcode data were insurance and fulfilment companies. Where postcode data was abstruse and obscure. We’re not in that age any more.

We’re now in an age where a motivated person with a laptop can use postcode data to improve people’s lives. Postcomm and the Royal Mail need to confront this and change the way that they do things. They may have shut us down, but if they try to sue everyone who’s scraping postcode data from Google, they’ll look very foolish indeed.

Finally — and perhaps most importantly — we need a consistent and effective push from the top. Number 10’s right hand needs to wake up and pay attention to the fantastic things the left hand’s doing.

Without that, we won’t get anywhere.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a great meeting with the Royal Mail. They explained in some detail the background to these datasets: how they’re maintained, where the data comes from and where money changes hands. It’s all a bit complicated!

During the meeting, there was an epiphany: one of Royal Mail’s representatives realised that because we were distributing latitudes and longitudes, and not the Eastings and Northings that are present in the Postzon dataset, we were actually distributing derived data, and not Postzon data. The upshot being that a single-user licence might be enough for us to operate with the Royal Mail’s blessing.

This led to a lively discussion about whether or not that’d be workable, what the restrictions would be and how much we’d have to pay for it. We thought about crowdsourcing the money to pay for a licence and going back online with real Postzon data.

But then, there was a development. Since the meeting, the Ordnance Survey announced that they’re going to make some mapping and postcode data free for reuse. Exactly what data will be released and how isn’t yet known — so far the only real commitment I’ve seen is to consult — but I’ve been assured by people involved that the question is of how, not if, this data will be released. I think there’s a genuine willingness to make sure it’s done well.

That, combined with the imminent restructuring of Royal Mail’s licensing system, makes us think that we should hang tight for a while. If the Ordnance Survey releases a comprehensive postcode database, ErnestMarples.com will be mostly redundant (about which we’d be very happy). If not, perhaps we’ll have to think again — in which case, we’d be able to look at Royal Mail’s new licensing regime and see what can be made to work.

So — for now, at least — we’re going to sit back and see how things develop. When the Consultation is announced, we’ll be responding to it. I’d encourage anyone who has an opinion on the issue to reply as well.

First, we’ve now got a date for meeting the Royal Mail — we’ll be off to see them on Monday (2009-11-23). The meeting’s with one of their senior customer relationship managers, so I’m not sure quite what to expect, but it’s great that they’ve agreed to meet and we’re hopeful. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Second, the ever-marvellous Heather Brooke of Your Right To Know sent the Royal Mail a FoI request last month asking about other instances where legal action has been taken for intellectual property infringements. The response has just come back and reveals that two other companies — Situation Publishing (aka: The Register) and Wikia Inc were sent legal threats at the same time as us. Very interesting.

We’ve no idea why, and if anyone has any inside knowledge or has heard a scurrilous rumour that might shed some light, please let us know!

Since we had to close, we’ve had numerous emails of support, several very detailed behind-the-scenes stories about how all this stuff works inside the Royal Mail, stories on websites far and wide, an article in the Guardian’s Technology Supplement… we even got an email from a relative of Mr Marples himself, asking if there was anything he could do to help. It’s been quite amazing.

I’m writing now to say that things have picked up a bit, and there’s stuff that everyone can do to help! Tom Watson MP has tabled an early day motion asking the Royal Mail to create a new licence for not-for-profits to use postcode data for free. This would allow sites like PlanningAlerts.com and JobcentreProPlus.com to function without having to rely on unreliable sources for postcode data.

So, please — write to your MP and ask them to sign the early day motion (EDM2000). Tell them the story, explain why you think it’s important, and ask them to add their name. Use your own words if you can. If lack of postcode data has affected you personally in some way (perhaps there’s a site you wanted to make that you couldn’t) mention that too. If you haven’t already, you could also sign the petition at Number 10.

Finally — and importantly — please also, blog, tweet, and tell your friends that you’ve done these things. We need everyone who cares about this to know that it’s going on!

Since going offline, we have been overwhelmed by expressions of support. At one point on monday, my entire Twitter client was filled with people retweeting things about ErnestMarples, to the exclusion of everything else. Quite astonishing.

There’s also been an amazing amount of media coverage — from the BBC, the Guardian, BoingBoing, the Register, Computer Weekly, and more besides. Many thanks to everyone who’s written about us or helped to spread the word.

So, what now for ErnestMarples?

We didn’t start with the intention of making money from the service. It was always here to be used by sites like PlanningAlerts, Healthwhere and JobcentreProPlus, which are socially useful tools that create tangible benefit for people. We hoped that the Royal Mail would let us be, but things don’t seem to have turned out that way.

We’re genuinely interested in finding a constructive way forward. We haven’t heard back from Cameron McKenna, or the Royal Mail, but we’ve sent them the following letter all the same:

Dear Sirs,

ErnestMarples.com was set up primarily to provide a service to socially useful websites: mostly non-commercial services that operate in order to create real, tangible benefit to individuals.

This is very much in line with the Government’s current policy, produced by the Power of Information taskforce, to promote innovation in third sector provision of public services, particularly online.

It was our sincere hope when starting the service that it would be possible to reach an agreement with your client to continue operating it on terms that they find acceptable.

As you have requested, our service has now been disabled. Since then, we have received overwhelming expressions of support from a wide variety of people and organisations from NGOs and Parliamentarians to blogs, news publications and hundreds of individuals.

There is a significant need for postcode data to be made available on more practical terms. We would very much like to open a dialogue with your client in order to see if a productive and mutually beneficial way forward can be found.

We would be grateful if you could pass this offer to your client. We look forward to their reply.

Yours Faithfully,

Harry Metcalfe & Richard Pope
Directors

Download this as a PDF

We really hope that they’ll take this letter seriously and have a genuine conversation with us about what should happen next.

Update: Tom Watson MP has also written to the Royal Mail.

We are not in a position to mount an effective legal challenge against the Royal Mail’s demands and therefore have closed the ErnestMarples.com API effective immediately.

We understand that this will cause harm and considerable inconvenience to the many people who are using or intend to use the API to power socially useful tools, such as HealthWhere, JobcentreProPlus.com and PlanningAlerts.com. For this, we apologise unreservedly.

In respect of these letters, we would be very grateful for any advice that anyone can offer:

We hope that at some point in the future this service may be able to continue to operate, but we’ve no idea when, or indeed if, that may happen.