Adding UK post box information

[Ed Avis-2]

In Britain, the postal service has supplied a text file listing all
post boxes.  Each box has a 'ref' looking like 'W1 106', and of course
it has a location in the real world.  The text file doesn't give
lat/long or grid references, just the name of the street or
intersection.  Sometimes the address given is precise enough to deduce
the location of the postbox by looking at the OSM map, but other times
when it just gives a street name you must find the post box by hand.

The original file, converted into tab-separated format, can be
downloaded here: <http://edwardbetts.com/postboxes/postboxes.tsv>

<http://www.dracos.co.uk/play/locating-postboxes/> is a project to
locate all the post boxes on the list.  Its data partly comes from
OSM, but also from people manually locating a post box on the map
based on the street name given in the text file.  "By submitting, you
agree to place the location you submit in the public domain."

I would like to import this data into OSM - to add post box nodes with
'ref' tags.  As far as I can tell this data is in the public domain;
mere facts are not covered by copyright, and the lat/long data has
been derived by hand using the addresses in the file (and OSM data) as
a guide.  I know that some people (who are not lawyers any more than I
am) have differing opinions, and feel that any information derived
from the list of postboxes must still be subject to the Royal Mail's
copyright somehow.  (In which case I would argue that copying the
'ref' and delivery time information from the notice on the front of
each postbox must be equally infringing.)  Anyway, because there is
disagreement, I wanted to check with you people before doing anything.

Can the manually located postboxes, based on OSM data and a list of
postbox street locations from the Royal Mail, be added to OSM?

--
Ed Avis <eda@...>


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[Gervase Markham-4]

On 01/07/09 11:18, Ed Avis wrote:
> Can the manually located postboxes, based on OSM data and a list of
> postbox street locations from the Royal Mail, be added to OSM?

Yes. But have you checked with Matthew Somerville, the author of that
tool? AIUI it's already integrated with OSM. I did the whole of N14, and
added it to OSM, and it showed up in the tool as done. (But perhaps he
hasn't yet implemented integration in the other direction...)

Gerv


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[Ed Avis-2]

Gervase Markham <gerv-gmane@...> writes:

>>Can the manually located postboxes, based on OSM data and a list of
>>postbox street locations from the Royal Mail, be added to OSM?
>
>Yes. But have you checked with Matthew Somerville, the author of that
>tool?

He says that as far as he is concerned the data is in the public domain, but
some OSM users disagreed, so he didn't upload any data back to OSM.

>I did the whole of N14, and
>added it to OSM, and it showed up in the tool as done. (But perhaps he
>hasn't yet implemented integration in the other direction...)

That's right, it is currently in one direction only.  Now that the legal question
has been cleared up, I'll ask him whether he wants to hack up a live feed back to
OSM, or else provide a data dump so others can load it.

--
Ed Avis <eda@...>


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[Stephen Gower-2]

On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 10:18:42AM +0000, Ed Avis wrote:
>
> The original file, converted into tab-separated format, can be
> downloaded here: <http://edwardbetts.com/postboxes/postboxes.tsv>

Actually, for what it's worth (probably very little) the very original file
is provided as a PDF on the section of
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/location_of_every_post_box_that
marked from Royal Mail Group and dated 13 June 2008.  The only reason I
mention this is that the first page has a copyright statement, and OSM
community opinion at the time was that with the whiter-than-white,
just-in-case-someone-tries-to-sue policy we have (had?) this info shouldn't
be stored in OSM.

s

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[Gervase Markham-4]

On 08/07/09 12:13, Stephen Gower wrote:
> Actually, for what it's worth (probably very little) the very original file
> is provided as a PDF on the section of
> http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/location_of_every_post_box_that
> marked from Royal Mail Group and dated 13 June 2008.  The only reason I
> mention this is that the first page has a copyright statement, and OSM
> community opinion at the time was that with the whiter-than-white,
> just-in-case-someone-tries-to-sue policy we have (had?) this info shouldn't
> be stored in OSM.

But it's not this info that's being stored in OSM. The info provided is
not sufficient to establish the location of the postbox (as I have
found, having hunted, occasionally for quite some time, for all 44 of
them in N14). What we are storing is the exact location.

Royal Mail doesn't know the exact location of all its postboxes. If we
find out for them, what are the chances they would sue us? It's flipping
useful from their point of view. They could apply proper Travelling
Salesman algorithms to them to optimise pick-up routes.

Gerv


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[SteveC-2]

On 13 Jul 2009, at 18:58, Gervase Markham wrote:

> On 08/07/09 12:13, Stephen Gower wrote:
>> Actually, for what it's worth (probably very little) the very  
>> original file
>> is provided as a PDF on the section of
>> http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/location_of_every_post_box_that
>> marked from Royal Mail Group and dated 13 June 2008.  The only  
>> reason I
>> mention this is that the first page has a copyright statement, and  
>> OSM
>> community opinion at the time was that with the whiter-than-white,
>> just-in-case-someone-tries-to-sue policy we have (had?) this info  
>> shouldn't
>> be stored in OSM.
>
> But it's not this info that's being stored in OSM. The info provided  
> is
> not sufficient to establish the location of the postbox (as I have
> found, having hunted, occasionally for quite some time, for all 44 of
> them in N14). What we are storing is the exact location.
>
> Royal Mail doesn't know the exact location of all its postboxes. If we
> find out for them, what are the chances they would sue us? It's  
> flipping
> useful from their point of view. They could apply proper Travelling
> Salesman algorithms to them to optimise pick-up routes.

http://abcnews.go.com/wnt/Story?id=3005890&page=1


>
> Gerv
>
>
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>

Best

Steve


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[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2009/7/14 Gervase Markham <gerv-gmane@...>:
> Royal Mail doesn't know the exact location of all its postboxes. If we
> find out for them, what are the chances they would sue us? It's flipping
> useful from their point of view. They could apply proper Travelling
> Salesman algorithms to them to optimise pick-up routes.

you are cutting jobs ;-)

Martin

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[Ed Avis-2]

Gervase Markham <gerv-gmane@...> writes:

>[<http://www.dracos.co.uk/play/locating-postboxes/>]

>>Can the manually located postboxes, based on OSM data and a list of
>>postbox street locations from the Royal Mail, be added to OSM?
>
>Yes.

I have started work on a tool to sync these
(code at <http://github.com/epa/osm_postboxes>).  So far it just generates
a report for manual fixing, but I will make it a bot fairly soon.  I have
entered the data for one postcode area, E10.

However I would like to check again with the legal mailing list, because I'm
planning to import not just the location of the postbox (which has been found
by hand by contributors to the Dracos site, as discussed) and its 'ref' number,
but also the postcode and address listed in the file.

For example the following row from
<http://www.dracos.co.uk/play/locating-postboxes/export.php>:

    Ref=E10 18
    PC=E10 5AH
    Loc1=Capworth Street
    Loc2=(blank)
    Latitude=51.5729084
    Longitude=-0.0116965
    Last M-F=17:30
    Last Sat=11:30

gets turned into the following in OSM:

    node with lat=51.5729084, lon=-0.0116965, and tags:
        amenity=post_box
        ref=E10 18
        postal_code=E10 5AH
        addr:street=Capworth Street

It appears to me that adding these two extra tags postal_code and
addr:street (and sometimes addr:housenumber) from the data file should
be okay, but I wanted to check with this list.  If these are felt to be
a step too far then I will just add the lat,lon and ref.

--
Ed Avis <eda@...>


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