[endgame]

Look at any photograph or work of art. If you could duplicate exactly the first tiny dot of color, and then the next and the next, you would end with a perfect copy of the whole, indistinguishable from the original in every way, including the so-called "moral value" of the art itself. Nothing can transcend its smallest elements.

(CEO Morgan)

[thesteamboat]

To add some context which my sibling commenters seem to be missing -- this is a quote from the game Alpha Centauri read upon discovering the "Nanoreplicator" technology. Furthermore it's from a manifesto called "The Ethics of Greed".

[simonh]

Paintings are actualy three dimensional objects. They consist of layers of paint with varying thicknesses, transparecies, texture and even shape from the brush bristles. The only way to recreate it would be by layering at the molecular level, and even then you'd need to know exactly what molecules are where inside the structure of the paint before you could duplicate it. We don't even have the analystical tools to do that, let alone the manufacturing ones.

And then of course there's the fact that not all art is paintings and photographs.

[justincormack]

Well its more difficult than that, there is texture too, and other aspects. And frankly no one is ever going to bother to reproduce accurately the artworks I have on the wall, and it would cost more than the originals to do so.