Microsoft's MSN search and news site is trying to avoid Google's fate in Belgium, where a court told the search company to stop filching newspaper articles from the Web sites owned by the newspapers. Google would show the first few paragraphs of an article, and then provide a link to the rest of the article, claiming fair use. But of course, there were ads on the Google page and so Google was benefiting from someone else's copyrighted content. The Belgian courts told the company to cut it out. So Microsoft, which apparently does the same thing, is negotiating with the newspapers over the issue. The obvious solution is to share ad revenue with the papers. Less money for the search sites, but then, they would be doing things fairly and legally, which should not be difficult concepts.