BELGIAN newspapers have never been so hot. Media executives across the globe are this week paying close attention to publications such as Le Soir, Le Quotidien de Namur and La Meuse after the titles banded together to take on the biggest name on the internet.

Last week a dozen Belgian papers were cut off by Google after a court ordered the web giant to stop reproducing their content or face a fine of €1m (£673,000) a day.

The decision strikes at the heart of Google’s business mode — accessing and indexing content found on all kinds of websites, including those of news organisations, without paying for it.

An appeal is to be heard in late November.

In its infancy, not so very long ago, Google was seen as a force for good, a democratiser of access to information. Now it is the whipping boy for many in the news media who believe the website and its rivals are cannibalising their advertising sales as people turn to search engines to read their news in bite-sized chunks.

The case was brought by Copiepresse, which represents some of Belgium’s biggest papers. Margaret Boribon, its secretary-general, said: “A lot of people told us we were crazy to fight against Google because they are so big and so powerful. But there is a legal framework protecting copyright and they have to comply with that.”

The setback is just the latest clash between Google and traditional media firms. The Californian company is involved in a major legal dispute with the US book-publishing industry and AFP, the French newswire service. Last week the World Association of Newspapers (Wan), a trade body, welcomed the Belgian developments, saying content providers should have a say in how their products are used.

The clash between old and new media was played out in their respective arenas. “Hats off to the Belgians” headlined French newspaper Libération while website Techdirt led with “Google hoping someone in Belgium recognizes how the Internet works”.

Danny Sullivan, editor of industry website Search Engine Watch, said the case seemed to display a fundamental misunderstanding about how Google and its rivals operate.

“They seem to mistakenly think that Google is taking money out of their mouths and they are not,” he said.

Google only provides links to other news stories and users are moved to the newspapers’ websites when they click the link, said Sullivan. He estimates 10% to 50% of a site’s traffic is generated by people who start their searches on Google.

“Google are giving them traffic,” he said, describing it as “bizarre” that they are complaining. “Google don’t even have adverts on Google News at the moment,” he said. The real problem, said Sullivan, was that the papers believed “they should be paid to be included”.

Rachel Whetstone, a Google spokeswoman, said: “We think we add enormous benefit; this is a mutually beneficial relationship. Copyright law encourages — emphasis on the word encourages — people to make use of content in order to publicise work. No-one wants their information to languish in obscurity.”

She added that it was a simple procedure for a company to opt out of Google.

But Boribon said: “Google can say what they want, the law is the law.” She said an independently commissioned report, sent to Google, had clearly shown that the company had violated the law.

Google had said it had not received notification of the case until it was too late to answer the charges. Boribon said the company had been kept informed all along. “In the US people don’t like liars,” she said.

“They are making the rules and we are not supposed to say anything. It’s not democratic. We do not have to sustain Google’s monopoly,” she said.

Boribon said she did not trust Google, citing its decision to censor its website in China and to take adverts from France’s extreme right-wing organisation, the National Front.

So far, she said, the papers had not seen a dramatic fall-off in online traffic, as many have predicted. She said the papers were still giving their full support. “There may be some individuals who are not happy but this is a worldwide problem; it’s a moral problem,” she said.

It’s not an argument that carries much weight on the web, however. “It’s a victory against a rising tide,” said Sullivan. “Potentially, this is going to make web search a lot more difficult and, you may have noticed, a lot of people like to search on the web.”