[mikec3k]

That's a result of how metering works - it assumes you want a brightly lit scene. You'll either need to use manual exposure or use one of the spot metering modes, where it measures only the brightness of a focal point rather than the overall scene brightness and tries to compensate.

[Sharlin]

Or you use the exposure compensation setting.

But yes, the metering software in a camera does not know how the scene "should" look like. It can only assume that you want a "properly" exposed photo - such that both under- and overexposure is minimized. If you want something else, you'll have to tell the camera what you want.