Thanks for the link. Form reading the article it looks like their motive is in fact extortion. They want to be indexed by Google news. They just want Google to pay them for every indexed article.

Oh well, this will be a good example of how copyright idiocy hurts internet media business. Without the steady stream of referrals from Google their revenue will drop down drastically. Ironically, the referral stream was probably what prompted the managerial types to do this in the first place.

You might be surprised to know that Belgium has a fairly complex political structure. Also, three languages (Dutch (Flemish), French and German) are spoken.

The court order was drafted by French and German speaking newspapers. The ‘Newscritters’ didn’t want Google to cache articles they had already deleted and to cache articles which are only meant for paying visitors.

While you are correct that this problem could easily be solved by adding a couple of lines, and that this court order is indeed not a smart move, it is worth mentioning that dutch-speaking newspapers have no quarrel with Google. As you can read here (in Dutch) or here (in French) or here (in English).

Kind regards, I hope this clarifies some things without upsetting anyone