After what Getty Images says is three years of conversations with Google, the photo company is turning to the European Union.
Getty Images has filed a complaint with the EU’s antitrust commission, stating that Google Images promotes unintentional piracy.
In a report by TIME Inc., the photo company stated that Google Images doesn’t prompt users to view the image on the original site. Furthermore, making these images available to download in addition, pushes users towards pirating the photos their searches produce.
Google has faced a slew of legal issues as of late. This complaint comes just a week after the E.U. antitrust commission charged Google with unfairly promoting its own products on Android devices.
The details of the charges include Google’s requirement that Android manufacturers preinstall Google products on their phones like Chrome and Gmail.
Google was given 12 weeks to respond to these charges.
Yoko Miyashita, general counsel for Getty Images, told TIME that Getty Images represents over 200,000 photojournalists, creators and artists who rely on the photography company’s protection to ensure they are compensated for their work.
“We want [Google] to go back to search functioning as search,” she tells TIME, “and not search functioning as a substitute of publishers,” said Miyashita to TIME.
Miyashita went on to claim that Google acquires traffic and profit from these practices, which is why Getty Images has asked the EU to further analyse the company’s procedures and determine their integrity.
Getty Images has invited photographers to join the fight by submitting letters to their regional regulators.
Related Reading: Canada’s Competition Bureau finding Google mostly innocent of anti-competitive practices
[source]TIME[/source]
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