Nearly 16,000 people signed a petition to strip Iggy Azalea of her 2015 Billboard Music Award for Best Rap Song for "Fancy," claiming the song was ineligible to win. But the people in charge of handing out the award say the petitioners are entirely wrong about the song's eligibility, the International Business Times reports.

An online petition called "Retract Iggy Azalea's Ineligible Award for 'Fancy'" has attracted thousands of people who want the award taken away from the Australian performer. Supporters claim the song was not released during the period of eligibility for the award. Here's what Christian Ferguson, who launched the petition, had to say about it:

Iggy Azalea's 2015 Billboard Award for Best Song has been proven invalid. The eligibility time period for nominations is March 10th, 2014, through March 2015. "Fancy" was released on February 17th, 2014, nearly a month before the eligibility starting. This is unfair to the other nominees in these category, especially to "Anaconda" by Nicki Minaj, who most likely would've won. Billboard did not follow their own guidelines and should have to recalculate these nominations without "Fancy" as a nominee.

But before you go jumping up and screaming "Eureka!" (OK you would never do that), there's just one problem — Dick Clark Productions, which is in charge of the Billboard Music Awards, said the song was definitely eligible to meet the requirement. The reason for the confusion has to do with the way Billboard tracks performance indicators for the award, as IBT explained:

Unlike most other major awards, the Billboard Music Awards are based on Nielsen sales data and chart performance, not the song's release date. The 2015 awards used a "reporting period" of March 10, 2014, through March 8, 2015, not a release date.

If that sounds confusing to you, you're not alone. But it looks like while dissenters have a right to object that the song shouldn't have beat out other nominees such as Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda," it certainly did meet the eligibility requirement.

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