Rules

Here are the rules of the contest. Please read them carefully!

Members

 * 1) Every person can participate, from any part of the planet.
 * 2) To be part of contest you must be part of facebook group.

Participation

 * 1) You must chose one available country if you want to participate.
 * 2) Every member must choose only one country. Don't cheat because you may get banned.
 * 3) Chosing a country, you can participate how many editions you want with the same country, therefore you are able to change it to another available country.
 * 4) You must confirm your participation every edition.
 * 5) Songs submitted after the deadline are not accepted.
 * 6) You are allowed to chose your song through internal selection or any kind of pre-selections.

Countries/Songs

 * 1) The singer should be from the selected country.
 * 2) A band can represent the country if at least one of members is from the selected country.
 * 3) The singer must have strong connection with the country they represent.
 * 4) Singers from Europe can represent any country with which they have connection.
 * 5) Singer from outside of Europe, except USA can represent a country if at least one of their parents is from selected country.
 * 6) Singers from United States can represent a country only if both of their parents are from selected country or in case if they are featuring another european singer.
 * 7) The singer should have lived at least 1 year in the country to be able to represent it.
 * 8) The song can be in any language.
 * 9) The song can't be older than 2000.
 * 10) The singer must be older than 16 years.
 * 11) Songs which took part in (J)ESC are not allowed.
 * 12) Songs from the national finals of Eurovision are allowed.
 * 13) The same singer can represent the country unlimited times.
 * 14) The same song is not allowed unless it got disqualified*.
 * 15) Official covers are allowed*.
 * 16) Some little countries without their own singers can can borrow artists from the neighbors:

There are countries that have a strong musical relation and the same official language, and this means they can borrow from eachother once in 5 editions. Those countries are:

Voting

 * 1) Voting system is like in the real Eurovision (1-8, 10 and 12 points).
 * 2) The non-participants are able to vote but all their votes will be combined and counted as one set of votes (12,10,8,7-1) and added to all the votes in the semi-finals and final. Votes from suspicious people won't be accepted.
 * 3) The host country and the direct qualifiers must also vote in semi-finals.
 * 4) Votes after deadline means disqualification.
 * 5) The direct finalists must vote in semi-final otherwise the country will lost 58 points of its score in the final.
 * 6) Non-voters in both semi-final and final is disqualified therefore not able to participate in the next edition.
 * 7) Voting for own country is not allowed.
 * 8) Tentatives of cheating may ban you permanently from contest.

Disqualification rule
From OESC #29 the new rule has been introduced. All the countries which will fail to vote in semi-finals will be disqualified. Therefore, the disqualified songs will be able to participate again as the in the semi-final voting the reserve voting will be used. So, besides the usual set of votes (12, 10, 8-1 points), every country which is voting in semi-final must also send 3 reserve votes. In case if a country is disqualified and it got some votes, the reserve votes are gonna be used, so the disqualified entry will get 0 points and a second chance to compete again in one of future editions. The number of points of the disqualified entry will NOT be revealed, so the country will be marked as withdrawn. The disqualified rule applies only for semi-finals. The disqualified songs from final are not allowed to participate again.

Overused rule
This rule was added to prevent the overused and unoriginal songs to participate and do extremelly well just because they are well-known.

If the song that you sent participated in 4 or more of the contests which have common players with OESC, that means that song can't participate in OESC. The following contests histories will be checked to find out if the song participated there:


 * Diamond Online Song Contest
 * Elegance Music Song Contest
 * Eurovision Memories
 * International Music Festival
 * Music World Cup
 * North Vision Song Contest
 * Songs For Europe
 * The Future Song Contest
 * Tube Song Contest
 * Velnakin World Song Contest
 * TBD

Final results

 * 1) The winner is the country achieving the most points.
 * 2) If the countries are tied, the one which received points from the most countries will be the winner (or the best placed). If there will be the same number of voters, the country which received the most 12 points is the winner (and then 10, 8, 7, etc.)
 * 3) The countries which ended top 3 are directly qualified for next edition. If one of them is withdrawing by different reasons, the place is given to country on 4th place, and so on.

Limit of participation
Every member can hold just ONE country. As the number of participants is too big, it has been decided to create a rule which prevent the number of countries to increase more than 45. In this case, the countries which ended on bottom places in the semi-finals of the previous edition, must skip one edition, so only the first 45 countries are allowed to take part. The number of bottom countries depends of the number of confirmed participants, they can be from 1 to 15.

'''How it works? '''Let's suppose that 50 countries confirmed to participate. In this case, the 5 countries who scored the worst in the previous edition must skip the upcoming edition, in order to let only 45 of them take part. Same goes if there are more participants, as for example, from 60 countries, 15 who scored the least points in semi-finals must skip one contest. The eliminated countries are allowed to return next edition, instead of other countries which are going to be eliminated.

^To be discussed yet

Facebook group Rules

 * 1) In the Facebook group you can freely talk and publish about all things about OESC and Eurovision you want, if you stick to the rules. In the case you want to talk or publish stuffs not about OESC you must ask to the admin first.
 * 2) Try to talk English. This is an international competition and everybody should understand what you are saying.
 * 3) This is a contest, where people should become friends. Please don't use violating or rude language. If you have to say your opinion, do it in the way to not hurt someone.
 * 4) Don't spam and don't post links to other contests/groups without admin's permission. This can disturb rest of the members.

Black list
Since OESC #28, it was decided to make a more strict rule to avoid random participation. So, you can get 1 ban for: In case if you get 1 ban, you have to skip one edition. If you get 3 bans, you will be permanently out from the group and from the contest.
 * Confirming but not submitting at time;
 * Non-voting in semi-final and/or final;
 * Being rude and receiving at least 3 complaints from OESC members;

In case if you are cheating by using multiple accounts or sending fake votes, you may be banned directly. From now every IP will be checked and people with same IP will be banned as well.

'''ENJOY! '''