U.S Photo Agency, Getty Images has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission in Brussels this week, accusing Google Images of harvesting its photographs in a way that siphoned traffic away from Getty’s paid-for website.
Getty, one of the world’s biggest photographic agencies, has complained that Google was unfairly undermining its business because of the way it displays pictures in search results in a competition law complaint against the firm.
The US based photo agency has claim that Google is promoting piracy by free-riding on the business of photojournalism without generating any content itself.
Getty’s complaint focuses specifically on changes made in 2013 to Google Images, which it said had not only affected its image licensing business, but content creators around the world, by creating captivating galleries of high resolution copyrighted content.
Because image consumption is immediate, unlike other Google products like news or music, once an image is displayed in high resolution large format, there is little impetus for the user to view the image on the original source site, Getty said in a statement.
The practice, according to Getty, had the effect of promoting “piracy, resulting in widespread copyright infringement, turning users into accidental pirates”.
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