surely finding the actual owner of the copyrights of the image i used, would be harder than finding a suitable "free" replacement 
pretty much everything i did with the world-layer was done with the layer effects, so it is easy to replace the shape with something else. mabe something completely different as well... however the shape of the world has a few not to underestimate benefits: tt includes rather complex parts, but also some large areas where complex textures have some space to unfold. also the shape of the world can be considered as one of the best known abstractions, but there is basically no manifested message attached to it. without giving it too much thought i think this is rather rare for something so well known. Hm, just thinking out loud 
thanks for the suggestions, i'll keep my eyes open
