Defining "Copyfighter"

I've been thinking more about the copyfight/weblog software debate after seeing the subsequent posts from Charlie, Jeff, and Krista. Krista in particular, although she may not realize it, has really prodded me to think about my thoroughly unexamined use of the term "copyfighter." She definitely thinks it's important to contribute to the commons, as evidenced by the fact that she doesn't do "All Rights Reserved" on her weblog, but she doesn't self-identify as a copyfighter. What is a copyfighter, exactly?

I define it rather broadly: To me, a copyfighter is someone who engages in conversations on authorship and intellectual property, even if the approach is oblique, as I'd consider Mike's to be. Moreover, copyfighters look at our current copyright model--automatic copyright, life + 70 years as soon as the content is put into a fixed medium--and express some kind of qualm about it; they think it should change in some way. To be more specific, I don't think one necessarily has to want to do away with copyright, advocate copyleft, or even support Creative Commons to be a copyfighter. I'd consider someone a copyfighter who thinks we should go back to the Founder's Copyright or, as Lessig has said in The Future of Ideas, the copyright laws we had in the Nixon administration.

I hope this clarifies my prior post. To clarify further, I didn't mean to misrepresent Krista's research in any way, and I'm glad she set me straight on her views. Finally, I don't mean to come across as an open source zealot here. I do think the software overlaps with knowledge-making and content, and I find Benkler's and Lessig's arguments to that effect persuasive, but I'll be the first to point out that I use Windows 98 and will soon be using OS X, both proprietary. In fact, most of the software applications I use are proprietary and, truth be told, I would probably still be using Blogger if it weren't for Charlie, who installed Drupal for me and has given me a lot of tech support.