My reaction is just the opposite. I enjoyed the writing, as I do with most of Robinson's stories, but I thought the premise about copyright was laughably absurd.

Supposedly there is only a finite number of songs, stories, etc., so authors and artists will be shut down because everything will have been done before. Therefore we not only need to limit the time span of copyright, we need to be sure that we forget old art so that we don't realize that new art is a retread of the old.

That's ridiculous; the number of permutations possible for colors, notes, words, is practically unlimited. The story demonstrates a fundamental innumeracy in failing to understand that the number of possible works of art is far greater than the number of atoms in the universe. We are in no danger of running out of ideas, whether copyright is extended or not.

Besides, the notion of restricting copyright just to encourage artists to submit retreads of tired old ideas is abysmally stupid. Art should be novel and creative, not a warmed-over rehash.