That was basically what happened to Blender, I think? I have been thinking it would be nice if someone was organizing crowdfunding and taking care of all the legal work to buy out old works properly. Thinking mostly of stuff with little value, that ought to be cheap. The rights to records released on small labels a long time ago that never sold very well to begin with. Obscure comicbooks. B horror movies. Low-budget video games. Old boardgames and tabletop-RPG books (illustrations included, ideally). Things that no one is making any money off anyway. Maybe something more high profile now and then.

But on the other hand if that was done on a large scale it might set an expectation that old things are bought out, or even that anyone ought to be paid to release anything free at all, and that sounds very bad.