There are no property rights in cyberspace.

That was John Perry Barlow’s decree Saturday night during the four-day Telluride Tech Festival, which concluded Monday.

Barlow, lyricist for the Grateful Dead during "an earlier life," co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation and penned "A Cyberspace Independence Declaration" to publicize his views as an advocate for civil liberties in the online world.

A festival honoree, Barlow is a Wyoming native and was involved in cattle ranching for most of his first 40 years, though he managed to get a degree in comparative religion along the way. When personal computers and the Internet arrived on the scene, Barlow found his new calling.

An ethicist, he is no friend of governments or corporations. He misses no opportunity to challenge the status quo of copyright and patent laws as they apply to information in the digital age.

"Ideas are no longer encapsulated in hard goods," he told the festival audience. "Someone can reproduce an idea exactly and distribute it immediately and freely to anyone in the world who is interested."

He foresees a system much like patronage replacing royalties to compensate creators of ideas and art. In the case of musicians, record companies would be cut out of the loop, allowing songwriters and performers to contract directly with consumers who could pay a small fee to download songs. It’s a cleaner, simpler and more ethical solution, Barlow argues.

A Barlow essay on the music industry vs. Napster copyright controversy soon will be published in Wired magazine.

Napster is a Web site housing a database that makes it easy for individuals to exchange music with quality equal to that of the original. Industry officials have reacted with outrage, saying the system is costing musicians and companies millions in sales.

Festival-goers heard Barlow’s response as he read his essay titled "Slouching Toward Hollywood:"

Today is a critical moment in history, Barlow said, with the advent of instant, worldwide exchange of information between individuals. New laws (or the extension of old laws) aren’t needed in this freewheeling virtual world, he said. Its citizens will be self-regulating. People will do the right thing. "Ethics will make a comeback."

Sunday’s festival honoree, Richard Stallman, seconded Barlow’s call for a return to and reliance upon ethics to guide technological developments.

Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985 and is co-creator of what has become the GNU/Linux operating system.

Standing in his socks on the podium at the Sheridan Opera House, his shoes and laptop stashed beneath the lectern, he challenged the audience to forego licensed, proprietary software and opt for free software.

Free software offers its users the freedom to run the software, to change it, share it and publish improved versions to benefit the community. Those improved versions often enhance the power, reliability and security, Stallman said.

Commercial software licensing agreements deny most fundamental rights, he said. "Do you want to live in a society that uses fear (of prosecution) to keep people from sharing with their neighbors? It poisons goodwill. It teaches us to betray our fellow beings."

Free software isn’t necessarily available at no charge. Stallman supports fees for distribution and a "copyleft" statement that grants freedoms on the condition that those freedoms are included on all modified versions of the software.

"When we talk about free software we’re talking about (the users’) freedom, not price. Think about free speech, not free beer," he said.

As he concluded, Stallman donned a robe and "halo," adopting the role of "Saint IGNUcius" and saying, "I can bless your computer by exorcising the proprietary software and replacing it with all free software."