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WASHINGTON (AP) -- When Lois Gibbs learned in 1978 that 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals were buried under her Niagara Falls, N.Y., neighborhood, she tried to make sense of all the information and scientific names suddenly thrown at her.
She turned to her local library, wading through medical journals and old newspaper articles to understand the chemicals and the diseases they caused. Gibbs credits this immediate access to information with helping her organize parents in Love Canal and spread the word about toxic dumps.
Now, thanks to the Internet, there's more information than ever before. But educators and librarians fear that average citizens won't be able to get at it because of proposed changes in copyright laws.
Congress is trying to balance protecting the work of authors, songwriters and others with making important information available to students and other researchers.
The House and Senate could agree this week on legislation that would implement two copyright treaties adopted in 1996 by the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization.
Current "fair use" laws allow personal use of copyrighted material without obtaining advance permission. Students can quote from books in their research papers and cable systems can relay television programs, for example. The new version could lead to the encryption of some material, keeping it out of the hands of anyone without a password or other authorization.
Hollywood and publishing industry officials say they are not trying to keep information from the general public. But they want to protect the work of their artists and writers from being downloaded and mass distributed with a few keystrokes.
"Everyone hopes that the Internet will become a great resource for education, entertainment and commerce," said Allan Adler, vice president for legal and governmental affairs at the Association of American Publishers. "But one of the problems is that the medium represents an extraordinary capability for flawless reproduction and instantaneous distribution."
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