Strong copyright laws are critical to The McGraw-Hill Companies in every business line, as they protect against unauthorized uses of our content and our ability to charge for the information and services our employees create.

The Corporation strongly supports pending federal legislation, known as S. 968, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT-IP Act). The Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously approved the bill, and the full Senate is scheduled to begin consideration on January 24. S. 968 targets piracy occurring on foreign websites whose primary purpose is to offer stolen content. These new remedies would help us reduce theft of our content and enable the Corporation to continue investing in high-quality, innovative products.

Government Affairs has worked with a coalition of content companies and trade groups, including the Association of American Publishers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in crafting and amending S. 968. We are now offering information for employees who wish to engage in the legislative process in support of the bill before the vote scheduled on January 24.

A draft letter for you to consider faxing to your U.S. Senator is available here <https://buzz.mcgraw-hill.com/docs/DOC-16462> , or employees can call or e-mail their Senators. Contact information for all Senators can be found here <http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm> . In addition, you can also reference the Policy Issue Update, Rogue Sites Legislation prepared by Government Affairs here <https://buzz.mcgraw-hill.com/docs/DOC-16463> .

Opponents of the bills, particularly Internet search engines like Google and Yahoo!, and their trade associations, have engendered a campaign of disinformation regarding the proposed legislation. Their campaign has resulted in the January 18 “Internet blackout protests,” as well as innumerable letters, e-mails and calls to congressional offices to oppose the legislation.

It is worth noting that these opponents have consistently and publicly opposed nearly every copyright protection bill and treaty negotiation to strengthen copyright laws and enforcement for the last decade. It is encouraging that they have recently acknowledged that “piracy is a problem that must be addressed,” but their suggestions for doing so would create a new bureaucracy under which it could take over two years for a government commission to determine whether a foreign site is harming a U.S. copyright holder. By that time, enforcement would be of little or no use to McGraw-Hill and other content providers.

Some examples of opponents’ arguments that do not comport with the language in the bills or statements by public officials:

- The legislation would shut down U.S. sites. Quite to the contrary, the legislation makes clear in several provisions that the targets are foreign sites, and only those dedicated to infringing American made content.

- The legislation would require Internet service providers, search engines, advertisers and payment processors to monitor for infringements. The bills contain specific language that states there is no such obligation.

- The legislation would “break the Internet” by forcing Internet companies to make technological changes to block or disable foreign piracy sites. These same companies already have the technology to block or disable sites in order to combat child pornography, illicit drug transactions, and other crimes under the laws of various nations, and the Internet still functions well. The technology would be the same in the case of copyright infringements.

- The Obama Administration opposes the legislation. That’s not what the White House blog post <http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/01/14/obama-administration-responds-we-people-petitions-sopa-and-online-piracy> over this past weekend said. Rather, the White House has called for legislation that does not censor legal activities on the Internet and that does not endanger cybersecurity, positions with which the Corporation agrees.

The PROTECT-IP Act would provide new means for the U.S. Attorney General and content owners like the Corporation to prevent Internet sites that are pirating U.S. content but are located outside the United States from serving that pirated content to U.S. customers. Tools available to the Attorney General and content owners would differ somewhat, but both would make the fight against piracy more effective.

The Attorney General would be provided new powers to obtain court orders that deem a foreign site as “dedicated to infringement” and gain the assistance of Internet payment processors, advertisers, search engines and domain name registrars to stop delivering services to the sites to users in the United States or to disable links and registration for the sites. Copyright owners like our McGraw-Hill businesses could undergo a similar court procedure, allowing us to seek assistance from advertisers and payment processors, although not from search engines or domain name registrars.