USPS: ZIP Codes are “proprietary business information”
The issue here is that their quote is in government-speak that not everyone can understand. Translated into plain English:<p>"proprietary business information" means "this nation's copyright and patent systems are horribly and possibly irrevocably broken and many government departments are so unaccountable they feel so entitled and lawless they care more about making their jobs easy than serving the people paying their salaries."<p>When you read it that way everything makes sense.<p>EDIT: many posts on whether the USPS is government or not. I hope we don't lose sight of the forest of bureaucracies large and entrenched enough to skirt accountability and twist IP laws in ways the Constitution never intended while focusing on that tree. That is, the details of its connection to the government don't change its behavior.