Google News Axed by Belgian Court

Google’s News Service received an Axe from Belgian Court after it ruled that Google is violating its copyright laws by indexing and directly linking to stories in Belgian.

Complaint was filed by Belgian Newspaper Editors who claimed that newspapers are loosing revenue because Google was directly linking to stories rather than publication homepage. However folks at Google argued that they don’t reproduce content, but they just make it searchable.

Belgian Newspaper Editors Association is now trying to convince Google to pay fees to access their content. However that talks so far have failed.

I feel internet is supposed to be a public place where information should be available freely. Why would Google pay them for giving more readers ?