Marcus Boon is Professor of English at York University, Toronto.

Despite its title, Marcus Boon’s book is not so much a manifesto as a philosophical meditation on…a world in which Chinese sneaker manufacturers make original Nikes during the day and fake Nikes at night; in which private copyright enforcers ‘bust’ copy shops for selling unauthorized university course packets, while Google Books posts the same texts online with impunity; in which a young student in Rwanda might use a laptop provided free by the Gates Foundation to distribute illegal copies of Microsoft software. In the midst of an astonishing abundance of copies, and almost limitless networks of duplication—what Boon calls copia, from a Latin word meaning plenitude—we suffer from a near-hysterical fear of unchecked duplication, in the form of ‘fakes,’ bootlegs, plagiarized assignments, counterfeit, or pirated goods… In Praise of Copying is too important, and too ambitious, to ignore.

Marcus Boon is Professor of English at York University, Toronto.

Despite its title, Marcus Boon’s book is not so much a manifesto as a philosophical meditation on…a world in which Chinese sneaker manufacturers make original Nikes during the day and fake Nikes at night; in which private copyright enforcers ‘bust’ copy shops for selling unauthorized university course packets, while Google Books posts the same texts online with impunity; in which a young student in Rwanda might use a laptop provided free by the Gates Foundation to distribute illegal copies of Microsoft software. In the midst of an astonishing abundance of copies, and almost limitless networks of duplication—what Boon calls copia, from a Latin word meaning plenitude—we suffer from a near-hysterical fear of unchecked duplication, in the form of ‘fakes,’ bootlegs, plagiarized assignments, counterfeit, or pirated goods… In Praise of Copying is too important, and too ambitious, to ignore.

Marcus Boon is Professor of English at York University, Toronto.

Despite its title, Marcus Boon’s book is not so much a manifesto as a philosophical meditation on…a world in which Chinese sneaker manufacturers make original Nikes during the day and fake Nikes at night; in which private copyright enforcers ‘bust’ copy shops for selling unauthorized university course packets, while Google Books posts the same texts online with impunity; in which a young student in Rwanda might use a laptop provided free by the Gates Foundation to distribute illegal copies of Microsoft software. In the midst of an astonishing abundance of copies, and almost limitless networks of duplication—what Boon calls copia, from a Latin word meaning plenitude—we suffer from a near-hysterical fear of unchecked duplication, in the form of ‘fakes,’ bootlegs, plagiarized assignments, counterfeit, or pirated goods… In Praise of Copying is too important, and too ambitious, to ignore.