In a bid to stop photo piracy, US-based stock photo agency Getty Images filed a formal complaint to European Union's antitrust commission, accusing Google of promoting piracy. It is said that the search engine giant is free-riding on photojournalism business, without even generating its own content.

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Getty Images accuses Google of taking away traffic that should suppose to go directly to Getty's website. According to Getty Images' statement to Time, Google has made their images available to download, which clearly promotes piracy. Getty also claimed that due to what Google has done, it resulted to "widespread copyright infringement," which in return, turns users into accidental pirates.

Since Getty represents more than 200,000 content creators, photo journalists and artists worldwide, copyright infringement is really a big deal because these individuals only depends on being paid for their work, and loosing traffic against Google means losing a lot of income.

Getty Images' general counsel Yoko Miyashita is inviting photographers to join them with their case against Google. In her open letter, Miyashita is asking photographers to write to their respective regulators, because if Google continues to do its practice, it will certainly affect the entire image industry.

Meanwhile, the complaint made by Getty Images came after less than a week after EU charged Google over its alleged monopoly on Android devices. It is said that the search engine giant used unfair practices of promoting the company's own services on Android devices.

Since Google required smartphone and tablet manufacturers, who use their operating system, to pre-install their services and apps such as Gmail and Google Chrome browser, it denied consumers a wider choice of apps and services to be used.

TagsGoogle, Google vs Getty Images, Getty Images, European Union, copyright infringement, Piracy, Google Lawsuit