In Praise of Copying

In Praise of Copying by Marcus Boon has been published by the Harvard University Press. The book is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license, and it is available as a hardcover as well as a freely available PDF file.

Here's an excerpt:

My goal in this book is to account for our fear of and fascination with copying. I argue that copying is a fundamental part of being human, that we could not be human without copying, and that we can and should celebrate this aspect of ourselves, in full awareness of our situation. Copying is not just something human—it is a part of how the universe functions and manifests. The issue of regulating copying, of setting up laws restricting or encouraging copying, is secondary to that of recognizing the omnipresence and nature of copies and copying in human societies—and beyond.