Earthdata Forum

At Wikipedia and its media service Wikimedia we would like to use screenshots of FIRMS satellite imagery from https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/ including the "static background" called "Blue Marble". If a user clicks the i(nformation) icon of the "Blue Marble" an informational text appears including a link to https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=898f58f2ee824b3c97bae0698563a4b3

The text on this link can be read to mean that a company Esri has created the "Blue Marble" background and holds the right to distribute this data under a non-free license.

This is in contrast to the free distribution of data and graphics from NASA.

This ambiguity is a problem to end-users such as Wikimedia and by extension Wikipedia, that for its informational purposes cannot use graphics distributed under a non-free license.

As such it would be most helpful if the FIRMS website could provide a non-ambiguous explanation of the conditions for the distribution of FIRMS imagery such as the "Blue Marble".

Thank you.

PS. Of more immediate relevance to this forum would be a clarification here in this thread: Under which conditions are FIRMS imagery such as the "Blue Marble" distributed? Thanks!

The Esri World Imagery Service terms of use identified for this service is on their website (https://goto.arcgis.com/termsofuse/viewtermsofuse) as well as a snapshot of it is provided below. There is also some additional interesting guidance available on the OSM Wiki at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Esri.
The data are available via open street map and we do not claim this to be a NASA dataset but reference ESRI as the source. If you prefer not to use this base layer when you create images from FIRMS you could use the light gray or dark gray backgrounds (available via the advanced mode / static backgrounds e.g. https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs;l:fires_landsat_landsat,fires_modis_aqua,fires_modis_terra,fires_viirs_noaa20,fires_viirs_noaa21,fires_viirs_snpp,light_gray;@0.0,0.0,3.0z)