What if.. say, one day, I just decide to create another site named BugriChartz, and I don't bother doing any research at all, and instead just copy the numbers on this site and change them a little bit to avoid any copyright infringement or anything..

I mean.. I find it odd that this is the only site tracking game sales in this magnitude. Why hasn't someone just come and grabbed the numbers here and made their own site yet?

Because this site did it first.

Why go that copycat site when you can go to the original and superior site? You also have to consider that this site is still not popular enough to get copycats. It's quite popular, but not as popular as sites like Youtube, Google, or Facebook (these sites having lots of copycats).

because here they can also enjoy the offtopic sunshine of me

If they're both carbon copies of each other, but this site gets the numbers first, then this site will win.

ioi has a giant ill tempered tiger that will hunt down and kill anyone who copies the numbers from this site.

But in reality there must be some kind of data protection facility used to protect the data gathered by this site.

well.. what if IGN or Gamespot suddenly decide to make a sales branch off of their site. And the numbskull they choose for a lead sales gatherer decides to just copy all the data here and change em a little bit, and then proceed to claim those numbers as their own originals.. I mean, then in that case, IGN or Gamespot sales site would get far more hits than VGChartz, since obviously they're far bigger sites.

how would ioi prevent that from happening?

Because if BugriChartz ever becomes a popular site, questions about the numbers will arise, and VGC will notice it's copying the numbers from it, too... as VGC's numbers will always come first.

From there it's copyright infrigiment etc etc etc

Because Mr. Walton/ioi could easily expose these sites and largely damage their reputations, losing them way more hits than they would have gotten from their sales sections. This site is also professional, so I could see a lawsuit happening.

I guess ioi will have to answer this.

1.) BugriChartz WILL become popular.

2.) what if I change the numbers a little bit, shave off some sales here and there, format the numbers differently, etc.. then I can claim that they're not copies anymore yes?

3.) what if I hire say.. TheSource (or you) to leak the numbers to me before they're posted here?

1. No it won't. What about BugriChartz would make it popular when people could just go to Vgchartz instead?

2. Someone is going to wonder where the sales come from sooner or later, and you (or this imaginary person) will have to answer.

3. TheSource, from what I've heard, is a paid employee of the site. I doubt he'd leak the numbers to some random person and betray ioi.