Original Content

This original portions of this project are copyright by Will Murray and released under the GNU Lesser-GPL 2.1 license. You are free to incorporate this project into your own free or commercial projects. Please see the license agreement for notes on how to give credit for this data if you redistribute it.

Entrusted and Embedded Content

The information in this project comes from a wide variety of sources. The following sources have clearly explained how their data may be used and distributed. Please refer to the linked agreements for complete details. Please read the agreements carefully. If you do not agree to the encumbrances, remove the designated fields from the database before using it for your own purposes.

CIA [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (Central Intelligence Agency, USA) – View the Agreement
DC_Country_FIPS : FIPS 10-4 codes [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Public)
DC_Country_ISO2 : ISO 3166-1 2-letter codes [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Public)
DC_Country_ISO3 : ISO 3166-1 3-letter codes [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Public)
DC_Country_ISON : ISO 3166-1 Numeric codes [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Public)

FIPS PUBS [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (Federal Information Processing Standards Publications, USA) – View the Agreement
DC_Country_FIPS : FIPS 6-4 codes (County Names and Codes of the US) [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Public)
DC_Country_FIPS : FIPS 10-4 codes (Countries, Dependencies, Areas of Special Sovereignty, and Their Principal Administrative Divisions) [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Public)

FCO [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK) – View the Agreement
Various : Country Profiles [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Crown Copyright)

IANA [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) – View the Agreement
DC_Country_ccTLD : ccTLD Internet top-level domains [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Entrusted (Freeware)

LOC [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (Library of Congress, USA) – View the Agreement
DC_Country_MARC_C : MARC Country codes [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Entrusted (Freeware)
DC_Country_MARC_G : MARC Geographic codes [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Entrusted (Freeware)

USGS [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (U.S. Geological Survey, USA) – View the Agreement
DC_Country_FIPS : Foreign Geographic Names [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Public)

USPS [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (U.S. Postal Service, USA) – Pending
DC_Country_Post_OK : Acceptable to send postal mail to the country? [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Pending
DC_Country_Post_Alt : Alternate country through which to route postal mail [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Pending
DC_Country_Post_Name : USPS preferred spellings of country names [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Pending

Wikipedia [This off-site link opens in a new window.] – View the Agreement
DC_Country_DS : List of international license plate codes [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Freeware)
DC_Country_E164 : List of country calling codes [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Freeware)
DC_Country_FIPS : List of FIPS country codes [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Freeware)
DC_Country_IOC : List of IOC country codes [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Freeware)
DC_Country_ISO2 : ISO 3166-1: Alpha-2 [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Freeware)
DC_Country_ISO3 : ISO 3166-1: Alpha-3 [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Freeware)
DC_Country_ISON : ISO 3166-1: Numeric [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Freeware)
DC_Country_ITU : ITU letter codes [This off-site link opens in a new window.] Embedded (Freeware)

Other Content

The information was culled from numerous electronic and paper sources. We would like to recognize the sites that were most helpful in gathering this data: Frank's Compulsive Guide to Postal Addresses [This off-site link opens in a new window.] by Frank da Cruz of The Kermit Project [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (this project would have never gotten very far without Frank's fantastic wealth of information getting us started!); The CIA World Factbook [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (an extremely useful almanac of data, even if it does have a unique USA-oriented slant to the data); Country Profiles [This off-site link opens in a new window.] by the United Kingdom Foreign & Commonwealth Office (similar to the Factbook, but with a British slant); Country Information [This off-site link opens in a new window.] from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (especially useful for information on Oceania); Wikipedia [This off-site link opens in a new window.] ("The Free Encyclopedia" stuffed full of lots of great information); ExPats.org.uk Country Info [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (information useful to British expatriates and really any English-speaking folks wanting to know more about the world); Statoids [This off-site link opens in a new window.] by Gwillim Law (perfect for people looking for tons of hard-to-find data relating to country subdivisions — a book and spreadsheets are available to purchase); World Telephone Numbering Guide [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (very useful and easy to use, too); Help for World Travelers [This off-site link opens in a new window.] by Steve Kropla (a listing of international dialing codes [This off-site link opens in a new window.] and more); Graham Rhind's links (links to postal code [This off-site link opens in a new window.] information and much more [This off-site link opens in a new window.]); Flags of the World [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (devoted to vexillology [This off-site link opens in a new window.], but it has other useful information about countries, too); Ivan Sarajcic's Flag Identifier [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (even less useful to this project than the last, but a superb resource for figuring out flags); Global Gazetteer Worldwide Directory of Cities and Towns [This off-site link opens in a new window.] (also not particularly useful for the project, but so fascinating it couldn't be omitted); and finally, who could do any Internet research without the assistance of Google [This off-site link opens in a new window.]?

There may be enough content attributable to particular sources that one or more organizations that developed original standards may claim some data is subject to their copyright, trademark, intellectual property, usage, license, or other applicable agreements. Most likely among these are the International Standards Organization [This off-site link opens in a new window.] [DC_Country_ISO2, DC_Country_ISO3, DC_Country_ISON], the United Nations [This off-site link opens in a new window.] [DC_Country_DS], the International Olympic Committee [This off-site link opens in a new window.] [DC_Country_IOC], the International Telecommunications Union [DC_Country_E164 [This off-site link opens in a new window.], DC_Country_ITU [This off-site link opens in a new window.]], the Universal Postal Union [This off-site link opens in a new window.] [DC_Country_Post_Cd], and some national postal services. If you are concerned about possibly being subject to encumbrances, you may remove the fields referenced above, and the resulting data will contain only the content subject to the licensing terms mentioned above.

DataCodes.INFO will be working on possibly obtaining definitive licensing information from some of the authorities above. Until then, let your conscience be your guide: if you rely heavily upon certain embedded data, research its usage agreements to see if your usage is compliant or what you have to do to make it so. If you find out anything helpful, please pass it along to us to help the project grow. Thanks! 🙂

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