Ratings Rumble

“The government has not explained where the other $4.5 billion in alleged losses come from.”

–Kenneth Vittor, general counsel of McGraw-Hill Cos.

As part of the continuing fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. government is suing Standard & Poor's Ratings Services (S&P) for $5 billion, accusing the company of ignoring its own quality standards when rating mortgage bonds, many of which subsequently collapsed.

The feds say that S&P, a unit of McGraw-Hill, should pay back billions of dollars for losses suffered by federally insured banks and credit unions in connection with the inflated ratings. But in a conference call Monday, Vittor told investors that the government's suit enumerates just $500 million in alleged losses.

Spill Saga

“What is clear is that [gross negligence] is a very high bar, and we firmly believe the bar is not met in this case.”

–Rupert Bondy, general counsel of BP

Last fall, BP Plc agreed to pay a record-setting $4.5 billion penalty and plead guilty to 14 criminal counts to settle a portion of the U.S. government's investigation into the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But the saga is far from over, as both sides prepare for a civil trial slated to start on Monday. Authorities hope to prove that the oil company was guilty of gross negligence, and they're seeking Clean Water Act (CWA) penalties that could add up to billions of dollars.

BP officials, however, maintain that the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion was an accident, and that part of the blame should go to Transocean, which operated the rig, and Halliburton, which cemented the well.

Preventing Piracy

“Research shows that users trust search engines like Google to lead them to legitimate sites when searching for music, yet Google's demotion program is not working.”

–Steven Marks, general counsel of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)

It's no easy task to enforce copyright online, where piracy of written works, videos and songs runs rampant. In an effort to crack down on such infringement, Google announced six months ago that it would factor copyright takedown notices into its search algorithm, resulting in lower search results for sites that garnered numerous complaints.

But those efforts haven't done much to decrease music piracy, according to an RIAA report released Thursday. The industry group found that when it searched for popular songs titles along with words such as “MP3” and “download,” Google's auto-complete function directed users to alleged pirate sites 88 percent of the time, while legitimate sites such as Amazon and iTunes were demoted in the rankings.