Oh, OK. I am more interested in rights than the matter of who might be an asshole. But as to that, if Suh is within his strict IP rights, then it wasn’t he who had people putting work in on a production they weren’t actually entitled to perform.
I don’t see where you’ve shown this.
What I’m getting at is this: what damages beyond the cost of the play do you think he can get? I’m not a lawyer but the law classes I took in school were business oriented. He is entitled to compensation for his work. I don’t think being butt hurt is an area that generates a lot of compensation.
I’m a playwright, and I do. Anybody remember Plays Magazine from school? Well, I’ve sold them rights to more than a dozen of my plays. Current subscribers can produce them without royalties, and cast them however they want, although notes are provided which say how many male or female characters there are. When I was a kid, I was in one of their plays as “Irving Cohen”. I didn’t fit the role as I am female and gentile. If anyone was offended, nobody said anything.
Whenever possible, I don’t limit characters to being only for male or only for female characters. Any student who wants to can play them. And for the play about the Mayflower I just sold, it’s fine with me if the Pilgrims are played by children of color or if a girl plays Captain Jones. Whatever.
This reminds me of the time some kids in my school put on selections from The Wiz for a competition. The judge told them they shouldn’t have done that show, since only the girl playing Glinda was African-American. She was, IIRC, the only African-American in our chorus.
The problem here is not that you think he’s an asshole. You have every right to think he’s an asshole.
The problem is that, because you think he’s an asshole, you seem to be bending over backwards to interpret the theater’s position in the most lenient way possible, and giving them every benefit of the doubt even when the evidence is against them, while completely discounting any evidence that supports Suh, and painting him in the worst possible light.
As Peremensoe suggests, you haven’t really demonstrated the things you claim to have demonstrated.
As I have quite clearly demonstrated, with citations, if his work is registered with the US Copyright Office, he could receive a six-figure settlement.
Are you disputing the existence of this aspect of copyright law? Are you disputing my interpretation of it? Or are you just obtusely ignoring it because it doesn’t fit with your preferred outcome?
The term you’re looking for is “statutory damages.” The Copyright Act of 1976 entitles a copyright holder to get $750–$30,000 per act of infringement without having to prove actual damages. It’s an actual right of a copyright owner not to have to prove damages. Proving the act of infringement is by itself enough to justify an award of damages.
A couple of years ago, my daughter’s middle school flirted with the idea of putting on *Hairspray *but ultimately rejected it because the school (and the drama program) has a lot of Hispanic students, and they didn’t feel like they’d be able to do justice to the black/white tension that’s at the core of the story.
They wound up putting on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory instead, with a Persian girl cast as Willy Wonka. 
Furthermore, the Copyright Act gives the copyright holder the exclusive right to among other things reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, or prepare a derivative work. So, yes, a copyright holder has the absolute right (given certain exemptions of course) to prohibit you from doing any of those things, even if his only reason is being “butt hurt.”
(Leaving aside a small number of “compulsory licenses,” which do allow you to use a work without permission so long as you pay the fee. None of these apply to staging a public performance of a play.)
Again, IANAL, but if the range is $750 to $30,000 then there is obviously some discussion in court. Or there’s a wheel the jury spins.
So I’m asking a real question, what would the playwright be entitled too. There must be some legal mindset to the damages.
The real answer is that the playwright is entitled to $750 to $30,000 per act of infringement.
You might mean to be asking a different question: How much is he likely to win if he sues? That is a very different question, though.
When you provide sparkling and insightful legal analysis like this, what can we do except bow before your legal acumen?
Yes there is discussion in court. There is always a discussion in court. We can never know exactly what would be awarded in each case unless and until the case actually happens and actually goes to trial. But in a case like this, there would probably be a couple of important factors working against the college.
First, this is a college theater department, and the people involved presumably have negotiated the rights to use plays in the past, and are presumably aware of the relevant requirements for using a playwright’s work. It would therefore be very difficult for them to demonstrate that their violation of copyright was accidental or unwitting. It would be even more difficult if there were a trail of emails or other correspondence that made clear the theater knew about the copyright rules, and had also discussed the use of this particular play with the author.
And this is often a key issue in cases of copyright violation: the extent to which the violation is deliberate and knowing.
In fact, in addition to the $750 - $30,000 range cited by Acsenray, Title 17 also says:
So, if Suh had taken this to court, and proven willful infringement, the amount could have been increased above the $30,000 limit.
I’m willing to be that the court would probably be unlikely to do that for a non-profit, college-based theater, but the fact is that the statutory damages provision allows for damages beyond actual financial loss. And one of the reasons it does this is to penalize people who knowingly break the rules. If the only damage available were actual financial damages, that might act as an incentive to violate copyright.
Say it costs $1000 to license a play for one week. If it were only possible to claim actual damages, a theater director might be tempted to use the play without permission, reasoning that, if they get caught, they’ll only have to pay the $1000 licensing fee anyway. That is, there would be no actual penalty for getting caught. But the possibility of statutory damages actually serves as a disincentive to violate copyright.
But never mind all that. You keep going with your Legal Doctrine of Butthurt. It’s working great for you.
Emphasis mine.
This is important too. In the case of a play, each performance would presumably constitute a separate act of infringement.
The holder of copyright can also sue for injunctive relief to stop an infringement:
Can you be specific where I’ve given them the benefit of the doubt and what evidence I’ve discounted that supports Suh?
OK, well go with that. Mhendo should have a legal opinion rendered by now.
Or if you’re Walt Disney, even long after your corpse has rotted.
The director sounds like a complete ass, but I don’t think the race or gender of the performers should matter so the author does as well despite it being his legal prerogative.
Well, pretty much every post you’ve made in this thread, but if you want to get specific, let’s look at post 155:
Suh says there was no communication. Clarion says they tried, but were ignored. You have taken Clarion’s version of events at face value, and used that as “evidence” that Suh has absolutely no ground for his complaint. Why are you automatically taking Clarion’s version of events as the most accurate?
Well, that IS why he had himself frozen…
But the point is, it ALREADY matters, to the casting directors and producers who seem to think not casting minorities is NBD, and the audiences who only seem to notice when the opposite happens.
Suh’s agent confirmed that he was too busy to work with Clarion. She also says there was “considerable communication” about the score. So I take Clarion’s version of events because Suh’s agent’s comments support that version.
It does sound like Suh’s agent might be at fault here more than anyone, but you are blaming Suh.