"In the USA, the address itself would seem to be Federal property, as you have no authority to change the address of the house you live in, do you? The address itself belongs to the U.S. Postal Service. If you claim it is "your" address, I believe you are connecting yourself to the U.S. (presumed citizen of the federal U.S.?)" A retired postmaster spilled the beans back about 3 years ago. He stated that when they brought in the new street addressing scheme, all they did was "overlay" that scheme on top of the existing rural route addressing system, and that the rural route system was still there, in effect, usable. Kinda like the metes and boudaries system of property identification was overlaid by lot/block/subdivision etc.