zip codes

[Paul Rubin]

Shailen <shailen.tuli at gmail.com> writes:
> Thanks Martin and Aahz. Anyone know if zip code information is
> copyrighted for the US? Anyone can look up zip codes on usps.gov (and
> other locations),so the information is readily available. I need zip
> codes for a handful of cities and could map those myself (or write a
> script to scrape them for me), but am not sure if they *MUST* be
> purchased for copyright reasons. Anyone know?

I don't think US zip code info is copyrighted.  There is a lot of it
in the TIGER database:

  http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tigerua/ua_tgr2k.html

There are also some API's operated by usps.com if you want just a few
lookups now and then.

It was a long time ago, I don't remember specifics, and the contents
are surely out of date by now, but I extracted a bunch of the TIGER
geographic coordinates for zip codes here:

  http://www.nightsong.com/phr/chess/zipcodes.zip