esaa.net is closed

As you may be aware, ESAA has been struggling to find money and sponsorship.

Joe Lee Computing has been supplying his administration and results services to the ESAA since 1981, and the ESAA website was created in 1997. The website has been managed by Joe Lee since then as his personal contribution to ESAA activities. During the last 40 years, a whole range of programs have been made available to ESAA to manage event entries, run event administration, and produce event results. These programs encompass both standalone PC programs, together with very comprehensive and complex online facilities which have been used by thousands of teachers each year to manage their events.

Joe Lee has always tried to provide around 80% more services than actually charged for - in 2007 the cost to replace his personal business contributions to ESAA with other suppliers was independently valued by Government accountants as somewhere around £45,000 to £50,000.

In the last few years, ESAA has progressively stopped using the facilities provided by Joe Lee Computing, and stopped providing any information to update the website. They indicated that they are moving all their activities to new suppliers, and moving away from the website to use social media outlets instead. Given that Joe Lee always tried to provide 80% more than he charges for his services, as the ESAA's requests to use his services have diminished, the 80% extra he has been giving has also diminished, and this has now reached zero. 80% of zero income means zero extra facilities.

Joe Lee was informed by ESAA that his services would no longer be required after the end of July 2022, and the website was to be replaced by new suppliers in early July. Hence the current closure of the ESAA website pending the new suppliers taking over.

Consequently, in much the same way that Brexit works, because the ESAA has opted out of using services from Joe Lee Computing, all existing programs and facilities previously supplied by Joe Lee Computing to administer events and provide results are now no longer licenced for use. New arrangements need to be entered into if anyone wants to continue as if nothing has changed. These programs include T&F and XC County and National Championships, T&F and XC Cup events throughout England, Combined Events administration and results programs, and the Awards Scheme online calculator with associated badge ordering and certificate printing facilities.

Therefore, anyone having programs on their computer which are copyright of Joe Lee Computing MUST DELETE ALL SUCH PROGRAMS and associated data. Continued use may result in legal action relating to breach of copyright, and referral to the ICO if any breach of GDPR is identified as a result of continued use of these programs. Joe Lee is no longer a Data Protection Officer for ESAA so any further use of his programs means that they are being used with no GDPR control.

Anyone wishing to continue using Joe Lee's programs must now pay for them individually at whatever cost Joe Lee Computing chooses to apply.

Live Copyright Issues

On 1st August 2022, it became apparent that the Regional Combined Events which were held in June used what has been described as a 'new Excel program' to administer events and produce results. The results published online from this 'new' program are about 99.9% identical to those previously produced by Joe Lee Computing's Combined Events administration and results systems, even down to line spacing, fonts, and other embedded features which the 'new' program developers won't have recognised. Joe Lee simply does not believe statements he's received that the 'new' program is entirely new - in fact it appears that results have been produced using previous versions of his programs and the corresponding results prints have simply been imported into Excel, and then a few headings have been changed. However even the edits to headings aren't consistent, which is an indication that the results displayed are not programmed but have been manually 'doctored' to try to make them appear not to have been created using Joe Lee's program!

There are other particular elements in the 'new' program's results that identify that the results produced in 2022 have been created using an earlier version of Joe Lee Computing's program - for legal and security reasons those elements won't be described here.

You can verify this yourself by comparing the following results for SW region:

Just open both the above files, and set them side by side. Make your own judgement...spot the difference...what do you think?

The 'new' program's results for all Regional Finals in 2022 appear to show that the program copyright of Joe Lee Computing has been blatently breached.

Consequently, someone needs to provide conclusive proof that Joe Lee's copyright has not been breached, or Joe Lee Computing has to be fully recompensed for this breach of copyright.

The future

The new website to be created and managed by a new supplier was promised to be active in early July. It is now August. All further work on the new website is entirely in the hands of the ESAA committee who will launch it whenever (or if) it happens.

Joe Lee Computing now has no further involvement and all previous software and online facilities are no longer available.