High Court to hear case to put works into the public domain

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear a case that could determine when hundreds of thousands of books, songs and movies will become freely available over the Internet or in digital libraries. A nonprofit Internet publisher and other plaintiffs argue that Congress sided too heavily with writers and other creators when it passed a law in 1998 that retroactively extended copyright protection by 20 years.

As a result of the extension, older Disney movies and other works that had been expected to enter the public domain soon were prevented from becoming freely available on the Internet.

The case could determine whether the "Internet really transforms the ways in which information gets to people and the things they can do with it once they have it," said Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law School professor representing the plaintiffs.

The Constitution authorizes Congress to give authors and inventors the exclusive right to their works for a "limited" time.