Days before the July 21 publication of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the final installment in J.K. Rowling’s blockbuster series, page images from the book began appearing on a number of websites, including BitTorrent, Photobucket, Gaia Online, Flickr and MediaFire. It’s not clear how the page images made their way to the sites, but piracy has been an issue for Rowling and her publishers for years. The emergence of so many new file-sharing sites may have amplified the problem this time around by creating a new means of distribution.

That said, the Harry Potter phenomenon isn’t a typical publishing event, and it’s unlikely that books anytime soon will face the degree of pressure from peer-to-peer and user-posted content sites that causes such concern in the music and film industries.

A final note: the latest tale of the young wizard is now the fastest-selling book in history.

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The ongoing global clamp-down on music piracy took an interesting turn June 29 when UK recording industry investigators and police raided the Scotland office of multinational engineering company, Honeywell. Investigators allege the company’s servers were host to a major file-sharing network.

The raid capped a two-month investigation by British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK recording industry association, which was tipped off by a Honeywell employee.

The Honeywell story stands out in stark contrast to usual news reports of P2P file-sharing by individuals using online applications such as BitTorrent and by students on university servers.

BPI says this case should make other companies sit up and take notice. Email and instant messaging are two simple ways that employees can swap music and other copyrighted content via corporate servers.

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