My university used to get copies of the CDs in the 1990s. I think they came out quarterly. You had to pay for the CDs, but the data was free. We bought one copy and put it on a server for everyone to use.

All governments provide some services for "free" and charge for others. Sometimes it makes sense, other times it really is BS.

Mostly as a commercial shift under the new board of governors that are concerned on financials (except when it comes to throwing away new efficient mail sorting machines ahead of an election).

They spun it as supporting the new RestAPI based system they put in place, it does have more efficient rate limiting, and some controls like Mailer ID verification (able to tie who makes a request for a label to that actual label, etc.) that are supposed to help with fraud.