David sez, “The Italian Post Office was privatized recently, and they pulled the freely downloadable database of Italian postcodes, right before introducing a new series of postcodes, extensive changes to existing ones, and a new rule by which they would refuse the delivery of any letter with an imprecise postcode on it. Simultaneously they started selling a CD version of the database for several thousand Euros. The Italian public was understandably upset, and it took only about a month for a project from Free Software Foundation Europe to recreate, and liberate the database which is now accessible again to users, and software developers, independently from Poste Italiane’s.”
(Thanks, David)