Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
Trending News
How (and how much) can billboard.com restrict reposting their charts?
As we all know Billboard.com lists their own rankings of various songs. However they break their lists into 10 items/page (apparently to generate "clicks" and ad revenue), charge subscriptions, have over-crowded pages, etc, etc.
But no independent websites (that I can find) re-publish the same billboard lists themselves, in an easily read subscription-free format. Why not?
What is stopping a website (or even a discussion forum) from re-posting a simple sequential order of songs? Does Billboard really have a copyright on a sequence of other people's songs? What if the website doesn't advertise as taking billboard's list but posts identical ones anyway? What if they change the order of 2 songs? 10?
2 Answers
- Tony RBLv 78 years agoFavorite Answer
Billboard magazines creates the list, so they have a copyright on that list and can prohibit its publication anywhere. And they can afford the lawyers and paralegals to send out DCMA takedown notices to other websites.
The lists are arbitrary. Don't waste your time obsessing over them. That's probably why you can't find anyone else publishing those lists. No one else cares.
I remember decades ago that some radio stations had their own top 40 song lists. That way they could exclude songs the management did not like.
- Nuff SedLv 78 years ago
Yes, billboard (or any other such list) actually has a copyright claim to a creative work of original authorship by the selection and order of a list of song titles.