The Seattle Times published an interesting editorial Sunday, cheering on a group of French-language newspapers in Belgium who have filed suit against Google.

The Times editorial writers suggest the surging stock price of Google and the plummeting stock prices of newspaper companies are evidence of the need to change copyright laws. The store shelf metaphor doesn't work for me, however. This is about a new era of information and access and we can't try to force our previous models to fit. The fact that newspapers are struggling financially to evolve (along with many other industries) doesn't mean the rules need to be changed just because the game has.

All I know is that I wouldn't want to try to ramp up a business model for news online without traffic from Google. And if this lawsuit is successful, then Yahoo must be sued, too. And other news aggregators after that.

We should be focusing our energy on innovating and taking advantage of new possibilities, instead of hoping that the rules will change so we don't have to.