Not sure if this was best placed in the Content forum or Google Search News...

Google News has been ordered by a Belgian court to stop publishing snippets of stories by French-language newspapers or face hefty fines [of a million euros per day].

The complaint against the search engine was lodged by Copiepresse, the company responsible for the copyright interests of French and German-language newspapers in Belgium.

"We are asking for Google to pay and seek our authorisation to use our content ... Google sells advertising and makes money on our content," Margaret Boribon, general secretary of Copiepresse, told Reuters.

Source: Journalism.co.uk [journalism.co.uk].

My first impression is that this is absurd. Surely the advantage to the news agency of having their news content indexed in Google News is that interested parties will click on the link and read the story on their site.

Isn't this just a classic case of cutting your nose off to spite your face?

The battle to control and monetise news distribution is raging...

Syzygy