This is how I view copying.
For people on this forum, other forums, and 13F's, and personal friends.
I have mental profiles of people who I respect. I profile their risk tolerances, specialties, valuation methods, style of investing, and holding periods. Then this allows me to short cut the vetting process on companies that these people own.
One of the things I love about investing is it's a lot like poker. You can have the same winning hand and how you play the hand really dictates your returns. Even our shameless cloning friend Mohnish, that everyone on this board LOVES lol, acknowledges this. Listen to his things about him and Spier with the Fiat Chrysler investment and holding periods and such. Spier got a much better return because he didnt sell when Mohnish did. In one of the other threads. I dont remember who it was that was lamenting on another thread on COBF. But they talked about how they had been regularly trading in and out of apple over the past 10-15+ years and if they had just bought and held it they would have had substantially better returns.