I don't like that idea at all - why should an author be obligated to do ongoing work in marketing / publisher schmoozing / etc to keep their copyright? If someone wants to republish an out-of-print novel that's still in copyright, they should at least have to pay royalties - perhaps it's acceptable if the author can't refuse a reprinting, but they definitely need to get paid. Otherwise small authors would have their IP stolen out from under them by publishers with teams of lawyers: sole proprietors don't have the resources to keep older copyrights "alive."
Not to keep all of their copyright, just their commercial rights. I say if the thing has been out of print for say, 15 years, verbatim distribution should be allowed.
Copyright itself only lasted about 15 years originally, which is a reasonable amount of time to commercialise a work. If you haven't done anything commercial with it in 15 years, it seems reasonable to me to allow the public to enjoy the work.
