[Freegis-list] Announced NGA Map Sale Change: TCP, ONC, JNC, GNC

[Markus Neteler]

Hi all,

is the FreeGIS community aware of this story (just found it by
chance):

http://www.gismonitor.com/news/newsletter/archive/010605.php
"NGA Map Sale Change

 Back in November 2004, NGA stated (pdf [1]) in the Federal Register that
 it intends to end sales of its Tactical Pilotage Chart, a 1:500,000
 map designed to provide worldwide coverage for tactical reconnaissance
 missions and Operational Navigation Chart, a 1:1,000,000 map designed
 to provide worldwide coverage for high-speed radar navigation.
[...]
 NGA states that international deals for data sharing require this
 change since these products compete with in-country efforts (public
 and private) to develop and sell such maps. In addition, there is
 mention of increased security, since after October sales will be
 limited to Department of Defense players.
[...]
 The sales policy change has prompted one person to set up NGAMaps.com,
 a website to trade CDs of the data in question (almost none has
 copyright). The goal is to purchase as many of the $14 CDs as
 possible, so that all of the data is available in the civilian
 community before it's no longer available. There are no sales at the
 website, nor is it a profit making scheme, says its creator. The data
 are in ARC Digitized Raster Graphic (ADRG)...
"
- end of citation.

GDAL can do the ADRG conversion to other raster formats:
 http://www.gdal.org/frmt_ogdi.html


If this is all true, how to rescue the maps...? Some
sort of FreeGIS server collection might be nice. I found some
TCP maps here
 http://www.hiciraq.org/mapcentre/geographic/500k/index.asp
Search engines will know more archives.

Opinions? Worth the efforts? 

Markus


[1] http://www.naco.faa.gov/content/naco/SpecialNotices/FR-04-25631.pdf