SAN FRANCISCO (Court TV) —Peace but no profits.

The tie-dyed devotees of the Grateful Dead have always eagerly collected and swapped bootleg recordings of the band's legendary free-wheeling concerts. Now, fans can take that tradition into the ditigal age.

The band's attorneys have agreed to let Deadheads download and exchange MP3 digital music files, in a logical extension of their long-standing philosophy.

"To quote Jerry at the time, 'When we're done with it you can have it.' The Deadheads have always played fair," Grateful Dead spokesman Dennis McNally said. However, the lawyers say that Web sites posting MP3s can not make money by selling advertising space. And anyone making available the band's commercially recorded music in this format will be infringing on its copyrights, the attorneys cautioned.

MP3 is a file compression format that ensures high-quality music downloads from the Internet. Both Sony and Universal Music have announced plans todistribute music online in MP3 form.

The Grateful Dead's announcement came on the heels of the band's discovery that a Web site was posting their music to profit from banner ads. The site recently removed the Grateful Dead links.

"They wanted to control this now rather than when the cow got out of the barn," said Grateful Dead attorney Eric Doney.

Doney believes that Deadheads will avoid sites that illegally offer copyrighted recordings.

Casey Meyers trades digital audio tape versions of Grateful Dead concerts over the Internet. He says the same word of mouth that created the band's fan base would also likely work toward discouraging the trading of concert recordings for profit.

"They just ignore people like that and ignore gestures like that," Meyers said of online Deadheads' attitude towards Internet profit takers.

Bootlegs have always been an integral part of the band's identity, because their appeal centered around the full, often drug-amplified experience of live shows, rather than recorded albums.

By varying their music from show to show the band ensured each concert was unique, making each bootleg a collectors' item.

Dedicated Deadheads often tuned in and dropped out to "follow the Dead" for months or even years, traveling around the country in pursuit of the band for months or even years in beat-up cars decked out with dancing bear decals and other Dead symbols.

The band stopped touring when lead singer Jerry Garcia died of a heart attack in 1995. But their fan following has not waned — though many are now baby boomers who long ago traded in their Beetle for a Beamer.

And MP3 availability, the band's remaining members hope, may attract new fans from younger generations.

Court TV's Catherine Heins, Kathryn Rubenstein, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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