Does the "file that can be transferred, but not copied" trope have a tvtropes entry?

[Reddish Mage]

The thing with No Plan, No Prototype, No Backup is that it's very object centric. It refers to stuff which for one reason or other no longer has or ever had plans, back up or etc.

Exactly, the data in question is being treated precisely like an object. Not just any object either, a unique object of plot import.

Such unique objects, MacGuffins and other plot devices, are often endowed with great significant to the story, acquiring a dimension of importance and even magic like powers (if they aren't explicitly magic).

In the real world, few objects have such uniqueness or significance or importance and a big reason for this is because, if something is important, copies exist.

Data being made unique, is just one example of this broad story-telling trend. Uniquely existing data likely exists in this way because has plot-import and it forces the protagonists to go after it/defend it/destroy it just like other unique plot-significant objects.

What it boils down to is a variant of Came Back Wrong, except instead of resurrecting {being} you're duplicating it or backing it up while it's alive. I would guess that they have similar roots - namely that such copying or rezzing amounts to creating life, something that humans are instilled to see as an act of hubris.

I don't know if humans are instilled into seeing creating life as an act of hubris....

However, since Frankenstein its a common theme.

However, creating a perfect copy is uncanny and philosophically troubling in ways merely creating a life is not...

Help here?

I've always figured it was partly an ego thing and partly a fear thing.

Truly copy a human or an AI character that passes as human-level, and you can show they're not irreplaceable. Not unique. Trivial. You have demonstrated that there's some precise method to build a being that is "human". We know everything there is to know about consciousness and the human mind, and it's all physical processes. "We" as in, you know, the people in the fictional universe.

People prefer to have their self-worth and their preconceptions about reality verified. Both in day-to-day life and in their fantasies. To show things as otherwise might have fridge horror implications and I think authors tend to avoid such domains if it is not intentional. This is something that lurks under the surface of that idea, and I think it makes some people uncomfortable to consider the notion.

Fear of the cosmic variety is the reason, in other words.

I didn't know fridge horror is was a trope but yes. There is something very disturbing about the idea that you can take a person, clone them, and then everything is the same and things are fine.

How many stories can you give off the top of your head where a character gets cloned for rather mundane utilitarian reasons and it works without going horrifically wrong or otherwise setting off plot bombs?