Bad news for the hordes of Belgian news junkies: The WSJ.com reports that Belgian newspaper Copiepresse has won a court order blocking Google from running headlines and links in the Belgian version of its Google News service. Should the search engine not comply within ten days, it will have to pay out a million euros a day.

The debate over "fair use" has been around for ages, of course, and blogland is quick to ridicule the Belgian paper as being just another reactionary publisher, out of step with the times. "One of these days," writes TechDirt, "perhaps, both courts and publishers will learn that having someone link to you is a good thing, especially when it's a site that people go to in order to look for exactly the type of content you produce." Probably true, though you can't blame the Belgians for being a bit defensive, and exactly what constitutes "fair use" may not be quite as cut-and-dry as U.S. bloggers would have it. Mainly, it's nice to see someone other than the French taking a vaguely irrational stand against U.S. tech dominance.