A court in Belgium has ordered that all links to newspaper articles published in Belgium be removed from Google News.

An association of Belgian publishers - Copiepresse, which helps enforce copyrights of some of Belgium's best-known newspapers - won the case that charged Google of violating Belgium's copyright laws by publishing summaries of articles and links to them, reports the New York Times. The Belgian Court of First Instance rule that failure to remove the items from Google News would result in daily fines of 1 million euros ($1.27 million).

Copiepresse says legal action was necessary because Google was profiting from the work of the newspapers. Google says that copyright law protects Gogole News under fair-use provisions. But many European publishers disagree - and their laws are similar to Belgium's.

A Google U.K. spokesman said Google News in fact benefits publishers by making their content easier to find and sending traffic to their websites. He adds: "If a newspaper does not want to be part of Google News we remove their content from our index…. There is no need for legal action and all the associated costs."