The rules regarding song eligibility have been formally updated after our chat discussion.

The relevant section is highlighted in bold below:

Songs cannot be Eurovision Song Contest or Junior Eurovision Song Contest songs, nor may they be songs that have taken part in Eurovision national finals that have been broadcasted on television or via radio in any country. This includes any variants, covers or different versions of any such song. However, songs can be by artists that have taken part in the Eurovision Song Contest or any Eurovision national finals, as long as the song itself was not part of such a show. Songs that were intended to participate in a national final but did not reach any televised/radio broadcasted live heats are permitted. Songs must be available on YouTube in the United Kingdom.

Songs may be disqualified if the participants who submitted them fail to finalise their votes before the deadline for either the semifinal or final, or if a song is deemed by the administration team to bring escChat.com or the escChat.com Song Contest into disrepute. Such decisions are solely undertaken at the discretion of the administration team of escChat.com and no correspondence or debate will be entered into.

If two people submit the same song or two people enter songs by the same artist, the person who submitted it first wins the rights to that song/artist for this edition. Songs that have been entered into a previous edition of the escChat.com Song Contest may not be entered into a future edition of the contest, nor may the same song sung by a different artist, nor any remix thereof. Additionally, a song will be rejected if the artist has previously won an edition of the escChat.com Song Contest, unless the participant submitting the song is the same one who previously sent the winning song by the aforementioned artist or the participant has sent a non-winning song by that artist prior to their victory.

A song, once submitted, may not be changed for a different song unless the submitted song is deemed to be unacceptable by the host and/or administration team of escChat.com.

The new ruling applies from #40 onwards but applies to all winners to date.