I suspect the question of duplicating consciousness already has an answer, anyway -- you're effectively creating a new consciousness, as the instances will be measurably different from each other from the moment you make the copy.

Is that actually the case? I know that in SF there are several answers to that question. Algis Budrys' classic "Rogue Moon" agrees with you (even though the duplicates have all the memories of the originals) but more recent works (the Star Trek series, the novels of Charles Stross and John Scalzi) don't.