----------------------------Original message----------------------------
According to the Greek military (as recently told to us  by them during
discussions) the 1:50,000 are indeed legal for Greek citizens to purchase,
but they are not allowed for export.  Permission is also required to
purchase these maps.  Of late, academics, etc. seem to have had no problems
(according to a couple of our customers) purchasing over-the-counter,
without permission, a few 1:50,000 sheets for their research areas.  The
problem we have had is the purchase of a complete set for export.  Here we
get the "yes they are available for purchase" and then the foot-dragging on
price, delivery costs, shipping method, etc.  Each inquiry, question, or
step in the procedure takes 6-8 weeks.  One Greek officer mentioned that
apparently, buried in the fine print of Nato, is the requirement that
mapping be freely available, and that the Greeks have been getting some
quiet flak on this.  Although we have been given permission to purchase a
set of  Greek 1:50,000 it remains to be seen whether we will actually get
them when we get there.
 
We had similar difficulty getting permission to buy the complete sets of the
new Greek 1:50,000 Land Resources and Forestry Resources maps.  We had to
get permission from publishing agency and the Greek military before
purchasing these sets.  We are also able to sell them only to US, Canada,
and Nato countries.  Again, individual sheets were not a problem, it was the
order for complete sets that set off the difficulties.
 
The restrictions seem to be lessening a little on the one hand, as there are
some excellent quality physical/hyposmetric maps being published by "Road
Editions" for Greece and the Greek islands (see our New Arrivals section of
our web site).  This publisher said that they had unprecedented access to
Greek topos from which they compiled their hypsometric data/tinting.
 
As Kent mentioned, the soviet military-issue 1:50,000 of Greece and Turkey,
although classified "secret",  have been readily available in the past, and
still are to some extent.  We also have not had any horror stories of people
getting hassled with soviet maps, but to mirror Kent's comments, descretion
is....  I think that this holds true in many parts of the world, such as the
middle east, parts of Africa, etc.
 
Russell Guy
Omni Resources
http://www.omnimap.com/catalog
 
At 03:46 PM 7/14/97 EDT, you wrote:
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>If I am not mistaken, topographic maps of Greece at the scale
>1:50,000 are indeed strictly forbidden for export, to the extent that
>we are talking about Greek national topographic maps (produced by the
>Greeks themselves).  The Russians, the Turks, and of course NIMA also
>produce 1:50,000-scale military-edition topographic maps of Greece.
>I have never seen the latter two series, but the Russian (Soviet)
>series has been on the market for some time, albeit not with the
>permission of anyone in Russia.  Rather, all such maps made
>available are at some point the result of smuggling
>operations--1:50,000-scale topographic maps in paper format are
>expressly illegal to export from Russia at present.  The
>only exceptions to the best of my knowledge are in the cases where
>customers would like to order individual sheets from the Russians in
>either raster or vector format, in which case prices are very, very
>high.
>
>The same thing, by the way, holds true for Turkish territory at the
>scale of 1:50,000.
>
>And the situation gets crazier still with military-edition city plans
>at scales of 1:10,000 and 1:25,000, which are now systematically
>becoming available.  Military-edition topo maps are, after all,
>military weapons of sorts.
>
>My own feeling is "caveat emptor" when one considers travelling to
>countries like this with the increasingly available large-scale
>Russian topos.  I have not yet heard of any horror stories among our
>customers, but to our knowledge we haven't yet sold to any
>"soldier-of-fortune" types.  The very safest thing to do would be to
>scan the needed portions of the maps into files readable on a laptop,
>or better yet, have the data in vector form.  But this is still not
>too practical for most folks.  Still, I think that most folks would
>not face too serious of problems (confiscation at worst) for having,
>say, 1:50k Russian topos of Greek territory in their possession in
>Greece, as long as they appeared to be bona fide tourists, academic
>researchers, or businesspersons.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Kent D. Lee
>East View Cartographic
>
>
>Kent D. Lee
>East View Cartographic, Inc.
>http://www.eastview.com
>