
Geocoder.ca sued by Canada Post for their open database of postal codes - kennywinker
http://geocoder.ca/?sued=1
======
motti_s
Things are changing. Technology is cheaper, internet is prevalent and small
organizations disrupt the ways of the dinosaurs. We've seen that with
newspapers, we are seeing that with Hollywood and we'll soon see it in
education. The dinosaurs are big and powerful, but we all know what happens to
them eventually. Sooner or later technology wins. Always.

Having said that I hope Geocoder gets help with PR. I'm no PR expert but the
fact that this post is not on their front page is the first bad sign. And the
media, which always loves a David & Goliath story, apparently hasn't covered
this; that's another bad sign. Swaying public opinion to your side is the way
to win this, not litigation. If Geocoder lets Canada Post drag them to court
they've already lost.

As a Canadian I'm one of the owners of Canada Post and I hope I lose.

~~~
tyrelb
Canada Post is pretty stupid on this one. Even if you type a postal code into
Google Maps you get a result.

I could imagine how old and stupid the gov't official is who filed that claim.
Canada's a broke country, and the latest government budget has cut a tonne of
government jobs, slashed R&D credits, etc.

~~~
abrichr
_Canada's a broke country_

On what basis do you make that claim?

~~~
forkandwait
I think the (ignorant) right wing in the States assumes that Canada has its
early 1990s fiscal problems because it is has lots of successful social
programs that would considered leftist down here. Idiots.

~~~
maratd
Based on the level of detail mentioned in the OP, it's pretty clear the author
is Canadian.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
...of whom some 39 percent voted for a Conservative candidate in the last
election. The blinkered Sun Media worldview is alive and well here in Canada,
and even if it doesn't represent a majority opinion, our first-past-the-post
electoral system means it can carve out a majority in the House of Commons and
form the government.

~~~
canadiancreed
As that system has done with six exceptions since confederation (Laurier in
1900 and 1904, Borden in 1917, Mackenzie King in 1940, Diefenbaker in 1958,
Mulroney in 1984). In fact ruling parties having over 50% of the votes in
Canadian election is the exception rather then the rule.

The only way to make sure the general populace vote = ruling party is to have
an American style two party system, and frankly, I've heard very few good
things about that. IMO Canada has a decent balance; parties on the fringe
either adapt or assimilate, and all parties gravitate to the political centre
if they want success. It saves having two powerful parties for long, and
prevents the dog breakfest of some countries where there's 15 different names
on the ballot.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
> The only way to make sure the general populace vote = ruling party is to
> have an American style two party system

I offer as counterexamples all the industrialized liberal democracies with
various forms of proportional representation, in which the composition of the
government actually does reflect the general populace vote. They may not be
countries in which a single party forms the government, but there's no reason
a single party has to form the government, particularly if no party receives
more than 50% support among electors.

I have a lot of respect for the parliamentary system, in which voters elect
the House of Commons, the House appoints a Prime Minister, the Prime Minister
appoints a Cabinet, the PM and Cabinet are accountable to the House. I
appreciate that this system has historically included parties, or formal
associations among members of the House of Commons to vote more or less along
party lines.

However, the parliamentary system also has a long tradition of coalitions
among parties, and even of governments being formed by parties that did not
win a majority of seats. The basic unit of legitimacy for a parliamentary
government is that _the government enjoys the confidence of the House_.

I was really frustrated during the 2008-2009 constitutional crisis over the
widespread public ignorance over how the parliamentary system works. It's
frighteningly clear that most Canadians don't understand their own government,
which makes the system a ripe target for abuse. Since the 1970s, Canadian
ruling parties have steadily concentrated power more narrowly in the PMO, to
the point that Canadians have forgotten that they vote for the House, not for
the Government.

As a result, governments have increasingly snubbed their nose at the House of
Commons - to the extent that the Harper government actually deployed a
handbook for disrupting and marginalizing parliamentary committees and
absolutely refused to share budget numbers with MPs, triggering an election
over their Contempt of Parliament.

During the constitutional crisis, and following the lead of the Conservative
Party, far too many Canadians argued with straight faces that a government
appointed by a coalition of parties representing more than half the seats in
the House and more than half the votes cast would be somehow anti-democratic,
while an appointed government that refused to face a confidence vote - the
most fundamental litmus test of legitimacy in a parliamentary system - was
somehow upholding democracy.

We can no longer afford a system in which a single party with a minority of
votes can enjoy a majority of seats and more-or-less absolute power to pass
legislation during its term in control of the government. You write, "all
parties gravitate to the political centre if they want success", but the
current government is busy passing one-sided ideological legislation - like
the omnibus crime bill and the new copyright bill - that most Canadians
oppose.

If they held seats proportional to their popular support, they would have to
cooperate with another party to achieve majority support in the House and we
would see more balanced legislation.

------
kennywinker
I came across this while researching postal code data. I was first shocked to
learn that this data set wasn't freely available from Canada Post ($5,000/year
to access it), then pleased to find geocoder.ca's data set, and then pissed to
learn they were being sued for it.

So far there has been absolutely no media attention on this.

~~~
canadiancreed
Which sadly isnt' surprising. The combination of it being something that would
only affect a small group of people (basically anyone in the IT industry
building location-aware applications), and the media's ADD-like ability to
concentrate on issues will keep it from ever seeing the light of day.

I don't know what this government has against the tech industry in this
country, but it must be some serious loathing with all the BS coming down the
pipes

~~~
kennywinker
This goes back a long way. Amazing amounts of GIS data for the U.S. was
available from tonnes of vendors sliced and diced in all sorts of interesting
way on a CD-ROMs for < $100 way back in 1996. Canada, not so much.
$3,000-15,000 for similar data. Because StatsCan and other organizations were
selling it to big corporations who could pay that price tag... the result of
that policy? Google maps could never have started in Canada.

~~~
vidarh
It's not _too_ bad these days, though. I'm involved with a Candadian company
doing GIS, and finding free layers getting easier.

E.g. <http://www.geogratis.ca> has a massive amount of freely available data
for Canada.

There are some ridiculous bits, though, such as being unable to get the
Alberta Township grid, which is a necessity for a lot of property related
stuff, without paying.

------
dmix
For those curious, the US government releases geocoded zip codes openly:

<http://www.census.gov/tiger/tms/gazetteer/zips.txt>

~~~
adatta02
Do you know how accurate that is? Every time I've seen census zip code data it
comes with a big disclaimer that its only accurate as of the last census. The
USPS changes zip codes at will.

~~~
enf
TIGER is the Census geo data set. This is "zip code tabulation areas," not
strict zip codes. The Census does update its maps more frequently than every
10 years though.

------
pagekalisedown
How can this data not be public domain?

~~~
hub_
Canada law is weird. They have "Crown copyright". As for Canada Post, they are
required to make money, and are not required to not exploit publicly funded
dataset like the postal code database. This is called monopoly.

~~~
rmc
_Canada law is weird. They have "Crown copyright"_

I don't know about Canada, but the UK has 'crown copyright', and it's
essentially the same as regular copyright, but the copyright is owned by the
government. Places without a crown still have governments that have copyright.

There some weird things, The King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and
the Peter Pan stories are under perpetual unending copyright. (Well Peter Pan
will go public domain when the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital ceases
to exist)

~~~
hub_
US law mandate that data created by the tax payer money, ie the government, be
Public Domain.

------
Karunamon
So what are the Canadian copyright laws like? I was under the impression that
you can't copyright facts.

~~~
canadiancreed
Depends on how you interpret it. You are correct in that you can't coyright
facts, but I'm sure the lawyers that Canada Post has hired will argue that
since Canada Post created/authored the postal codes, it has ownership of that
data and therefore can be copyrighted. The rest is just a combo of spin and
waiting for the sued parties to be bled dry.

If a country that is more capitalist and copyright mad then we are has no
issue providing postal data, that our crown corporation has their panties in a
twist is a cruel joke. Just adds another reason why I'd never use Canada Post
for anything anyways.

~~~
bengl
The other question is whether the postal code data falls under Crown Copyright
([http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/ccl/aboutCrownCopyright.h...](http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/ccl/aboutCrownCopyright.html)).
There all all kinds of restrictions and freedoms that come along with that.

Of course, it might not be the case that Canada Post data is under Crown
Copyright, since it's a Crown corporation and not a government department.
IANAL.

------
afhof
Is there a link to the C&D or the court case details? I'm sure we can agree
that helping people with zipcode data for free is laudable, but reading only
one half of an argument isn't a good way to make decisions.

------
sycr
They charge $500 for their data set. An easy way to combat this litigation
would be to release the set gratis. Let the information flow.

~~~
hub_
5000$. Missing a zero.

~~~
sycr
As has been pointed out, I was referring to Geocoder's rates. I had the same
confusion though. The request for donations certainly makes it seem like they
are beneficent, but they are themselves selling the data. Not that that's
legally or morally wrong (certainly not) - it's just a different position to
be in.

~~~
kennywinker
They are only selling it if you want it without the ODb licence. I.e. you
don't want to share-alike or attribute.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

------
elchief
i guess somebody should put their database on bittorrent pretty quick

my cousin works in PR for canada post. i emailed him to get the scoop. will
post here when i do.

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meiji
The issue with these postcode databases is that once they're released to a
customer there's no real way of tracking if they get reused elsewhere. The
contract I had with the Royal Mail in the UK mandated destruction of all media
and backups of the database once the contract period expired. As we know,
getting individual tables out of old DB backups isn't necessarily easy but
that's what the terms state. It's easy to see why they do that because it's
not really a complicated "product" and very easy to duplicate.

That said, Canada Post should have tried to talk before litigation as all this
does is make a crown organisation look like a bully in front of Canadians and
now the world.

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skylan_q
I wouldn't worry about this getting anywhere. And if it does, I'm pretty sure
the current gov't will smack Canada Post silly as retaliation.

------
AliAdams
I'm likely speaking from the wrong culture, but the phrasing "You haven't made
it until you get sued" on their home page sounds like Geocoder are attempting
to spin a bit of a complement for themselves rather than going for the image
of a David being bullied by a Goliath.

I hope I'm write in suggesting that such a phrasing may not the best way of
getting support.

------
ktizo
This has strong echoes of the Astrolabe/Olson case, only is possibly even more
nutty, somewhat better funded and a hell of a lot less excusable on the part
of Canada Post.

Legally it should be a walk for Geocoder, but I wouldn't like to make a wager
on it.

