Potter, potter...

Copyright law is a real dog's breakfast. Originally designed to protect printers against competition, rather than authors against plagiarism, it has constantly had to struggle to keep up with technological advances - and never more so than in the last 40 - 50 years, with the emergence of ever more sophisticated ways of recording and copying things. The problem is that, because it's forever chasing the fire, no-one really knows what the law is. At present J. K. Rowling (for whom I have the greatest admiration) is in court in America trying to prevent someone publishing an A-Z index of the Harry Potter world. But reference books of this type - which are in effect just extended indices - have never traditionally been seen as breach of copyright - and indeed a website doing exactly the same job has been running for some time now without (apparently) complaint. So why is JKR taking this step? I can't help thinking it's somewhat out of character - have her publishers pushed her into it?