Interesting proposition, but I’m not convinced its results, if it became fact, would be better than the current way that the books are produced and acquired. Although, I haven’t given much thought to it, and don’t know much about the publishing industry, I think ARI buying the rights and being responsible for publishing the books could actually cause problems. Problems that come to mind include the cost–amount of donation required–to cover publishing, marketing, etc… of the books; possible distortion of the books’ market; and the potential for destroying the works themselves, if ARI were to relinquish them to the public domain.
Supposing that ARI did have all the rights to the books, the prices of them for the consumer could very well be lower; however, what comes to mind is that they could really only be substantially lower if ARI chose to seek little to no profit. If that were to be the case, there would probably be less books published because ARI wouldn’t have enough money to publish all of Ayn Rand’s works, yearly, to the quantity and quality that they are currently published. Not to say that I know the cost it takes for all of the different publishers to put out their yearly prints of all the works, but my guess is that it’s well over that of ARI’s yearly budget. Currently, ARI relies on donation to send out around 300,000 copies of Anthem and The Fountainhead to schools; ARI is also looking for donations for the new AS initiative, with the goal of raising over $2million. They’re going to require many more benefactors, giving much more money, before they could honestly think about the idea of being responsible for the publishing of all the works, if they didn’t plan on sustaining it through the profit of the books.
One of the best reasons I can think of for keeping the profit motive for publishing and selling the books alive–essentially, keeping things how they are–is a concept inherent in the pursuit of profit successfully: supply and demand. The way the books are published and sold now is based on that principle, with publishers and other parties looking at what ever data they have for the matter and making decisions based upon that data. Although, ARI could make some very good decisions concerning the publishing of the books, I don’t think they would make better decisions than a party who would sell the books for profit. A party not seeking profit could make errors that would lead to inflation of the works, which would waste money; deflation, which would harm the spread of the ideas from the books; and possibly the preferential selection of some books over others, resulting in inflation and deflation of certain books in particular.
Public domain, though will happen eventually, isn’t something that should happen for its own sake. Without copyright protection, anything goes, and that leads to the potential for Ayn Rand’s works to be improperly edited or changed in some way. Of course, the destruction or distortion of a particular work in the public domain is just a potential; I recognize that most people are not going to want to read something that has been distorted, and the market for as accurate a read as possible will continue to be a primary for books in the public domain. After all, most of the things I am usually interested in reading is probably in the public domain, so I’m not totally and finally opposed to the idea. However, I do think that while copyright protection is still available, it should be utilized for as much security and benefits that can be had from it.