I don't think your description of copying is particularly useful regarding physical art, as that type of "replicator" technology (molecule switching) is far, far away. In reality copies are, well, never so completely identical (far from it). Of course whether or not one can actually detect the differences is another matter, and at which level of detection one is required to differentiate copy from original is necessary is yet another.
What do you think about museums -- a public institution that is more or less the antithesis of your view of the art world? Without going into semantics, let's say you have a genuinely old artefact. Now someone comes along and makes a replica. Let's say they're virtually identical, and the only difference is in the carbon dating, which you can't really fake. Which one should be admitted into the museum?
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I don't think your description of copying is particularly useful regarding physical art, as that type of "replicator" technology (molecule switching) is far, far away. In reality copies are, well, never so completely identical (far from it). Of course whether or not one can actually detect the differences is another matter, and at which level of detection one is required to differentiate copy from original is necessary is yet another.
What do you think about museums -- a public institution that is more or less the antithesis of your view of the art world? Without going into semantics, let's say you have a genuinely old artefact. Now someone comes along and makes a replica. Let's say they're virtually identical, and the only difference is in the carbon dating, which you can't really fake. Which one should be admitted into the museum?