Why do people prefer an original work of art to an exact-copy of it when they cannot tell the difference between the two? It cannot be due to aesthetic reasons because the two look similar. It is possible that if the copy which looks like the original is a counterfeit, we will be averse to it for purely moral reasons, just as we are averse to any act of fraud. But even if the copies do not entail any act of counterfeiting, they tend to evoke some kind of negative response from people. For instance, there are copies of Leonardo da Vinci’s
Monalisa and other famous masterpieces that are openly labelled as exact-copies. If the original and the exact-copy are displayed side-by-side in a museum, people will queue up in front of the original.
