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Audio equipment manufacturers want as few restrictions as possible when designing new products. Audio content providers, on the other hand, seem hell-bent on locking down any music you buy tighter than Fort Knox.

An uneasy truce between the manufacturers and music industry results in components that are more cumbersome than necessary (no universal digital outputs on a SACD or DVD-A players), have limited options for use (copying restrictions that run counter to Fair-Use laws), and are generally not what the customer wanted.

The result can be sluggish equipment sales, and a synergistic nightmare for companies like Sony that have one foot in each camp.

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), whose mandate is to represent equipment manufacturer interests, announced at a Washington DC news conference last week that it has issued a "Declaration of Innovation Independence" to deal with the problem.

According to the CEA, the document "provides a series of principles to ensure that fair use, home recording rights and innovation are protected in legislative, judicial and regulatory debates regarding the protection of intellectual property."

The CEA's Gary Shapiro explains that "For too long, the content community has been allowed to define the terms of the IP debate. Today we reassert our independence. We reassert our independence from the content community's stranglehold on determining the language of the debate. We reassert our independence to counter their efforts to inhibit the democratization of creativity enabled by digital technology. And we reassert our independence to ensure that legal activities conducted by consumers remain legal and are not inaccurately labeled as 'piracy.' The principles we present today are designed to protect the critical American values of innovation and creativity while preserving basic consumer rights."

The Declaration outlines six main goals:

Recognize that our founders instituted Copyright law to promise creativity, innovation and culture, and this goal can only be met if new technologies are not stifled and fair use rights are upheld.

Reaffirm the Betamax holding that a product is legal if it is capable of substantial non-infringing uses.

Resist pleas to create new laws, causes of action, liabilities, and avenues to obstruct new product introductions and technological innovation.

Reestablish the fundamental rights of consumer to time-shift, place-shift and make full use of lawfully acquired content; and use that content on a platform of their choice.

Reexamine the length of the copyright term and explore avenues for content to be reliably and readily available for creative works, scholarship, educations, history, documentation and innovation benefiting overall society and generated from creative minds throughout the general public.

Realize that our nation's creativity arises from a remarkable citizenry whose individuality, passion, belief in the American dream, and desire to improve should not be shackled by laws that restrict creativity.

Shapiro concludes "We recognize that digital technology presents a threat to the content industry. I am sympathetic. History is replete with technology disrupting existing businesses. But this change is called progress. I am unsympathetic if they insist on handcuffing new technologies with efforts to poison and undermine the critical Betamax holdings."

Other organizations have signed on to the Declaration including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Conservative Union, the Home Recording Rights Coalition and the American Library Association.