Mimesis, cover versions and the commercial vocalists’ dilemma; Sri Lankan perspective

Nanda Malini is a renowned songster, known as the nightingale of the Sri Lankan music industry. A few years ago, a young boy band who called themselves ‘Promises’ published a cassette mimicking Malini and appropriating a number of her very popular songs. Nanda sought relief from the Courts with the assistance of the authors of the songs i.e. lyricists and composers, for the purpose of making a sustainable case against the perpetrators. Making cover versions is a significantly contested issue in the Sri Lankan music industry. Although the Sri Lankan commercial music industry in its initial stages was predominantly reliant on covering Indian melodies, the attitude towards cover versions in the contemporary music industry seems to be varied. The introduction of Performers’ Rights under Sri Lankan Intellectual Property Act was intended to address inter alia this issue of cover versions in the music industry. Accordingly, this article will examine and problematize the various artistic and cultural concerns surrounding cover versions in the Sri Lankan music industry and the impact (or lack of it) of the National Intellectual Property Law on this contemporary issue

Promise and perils of Sri Lankan performers' rights: the royalty collection in music

Performers’ Rights, a novel concept in the Sri Lankan law that was introduced by its recent Intellectual Property Act, made several promises to its singers. One of the main improvements anticipated by the performers’ rights regime (PRR) was the implementation of a proper and consistent royalty scheme in the country. Royalty collection was deemed as the ‘holy grail’ to the issues faced by singers in the music industry as well as the authors. Nevertheless, much to the dismay of the artists in the music industry, all attempts to implement a consistent royalty scheme in the music industry has so far not been fruitful. This article explores and questions whether the proper implementation of a royalty collection scheme would improve the economic position of the vocalists in the country and resolve the issues in the Sri Lankan music industry. The article will, while relying on empirical data gathered from Sri Lanka, make comparisons with other jurisdictions such as UK, USA and India in order to understand whether the Sri Lankan situation is distinctive and therefore require a different system to royalty collection that is proposed under intellectual property law

Promise and perils of Sri Lankan performers’ rights: the royalty collection in music

Royalty collection in music is considered as the ‘holy grail’ in resolving the remuneration issue of musical artists through copyright and performers’ rights. Predominantly grounded on economic incentive theory, these intellectual property regimes promote extensive implementation and enforcement of royalty collection schemes coining the survival and sustainability of the relevant aesthetic industry and their participants. This article will examine the feasibility of musical performers’ royalty collection under performers’ rights in Sri Lanka while making reference to established schemes in other music industries such as USA, UK and India. In doing so, this paper attempts to highlight the perils of introducing a royalty collection scheme in a relatively smaller music industry in Sri Lanka that is heavily dependent on foreign music. Probing the capabilities of such a scheme to address the remuneration concerns of the country’s aging artists, a commercially vulnerable group within the music industry, this paper attempts to demonstrate how a music royalty scheme would fall short of its promise if not implemented with appropriate sensitivities to the relevant domestic conditions and with realistic expectations

Newly Discovered Bright z~9-10 Galaxies and Improved Constraints on Their Prevalence Using the Full CANDELS Area

We report the results of an expanded search for z~9-10 candidates over the ~883 arcmin^2 CANDELS+ERS fields. This study adds 147 arcmin^2 to the search area we consider over the CANDELS COSMOS, UDS, and EGS fields, while expanding our selection to include sources with bluer J_{125}-H_{160} colors than our previous J_{125}-H_{160}>0.5 mag selection. In searching for new z~9-10 candidates, we make full use of all available HST, Spitzer/IRAC, and ground-based imaging data. As a result of our expanded search and use of broader color criteria, 3 new candidate z~9-10 galaxies are identified. We also find again the z=8.683 source previously confirmed by Zitrin+2015. This brings our sample of probable z~9-11 galaxy candidates over the CANDELS+ERS fields to 19 sources in total, equivalent to 1 candidate per 47 arcmin^2 (1 per 10 WFC3/IR fields). To be comprehensive, we also discuss 28 mostly lower likelihood z~9-10 candidates, including some sources that seem to be reliably at z>8 using the HST+IRAC data alone, but which the ground-based data show are much more likely at z<4. One case example is a bright z~9.4 candidate COS910-8 which seems instead to be at z~2. Based on this expanded sample, we obtain a more robust LF at z~9 and improved constraints on the volume density of bright z~9 and z~10 galaxies. Our improved z~9-10 results again reinforce previous findings for strong evolution in the UV LF at z>8, with a factor of ~10 evolution seen in the luminosity density from z~10 to z~8.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Palpation force modulation strategies to identify hard regions in soft tissue organs

This work was supported by EPSRC MOTION grant (grant number EP/N03211X/1), National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre based at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London and Vattikuti Foundation

Periodic orbits for classical particles having complex energy

This paper revisits earlier work on complex classical mechanics in which it was argued that when the energy of a classical particle in an analytic potential is real, the particle trajectories are closed and periodic, but that when the energy is complex, the classical trajectories are open. Here it is shown that there is a discrete set of eigencurves in the complex-energy plane for which the particle trajectories are closed and periodic.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure