So there is this obscure book that was printed in 1971 in a run of 10K copies and never has been reprinted, the publisher has been obtained by the Elsevier in 1992, the author has died in 2003. Whom do I pay to read this, except the local library to maybe get it via ILL after half a year of waiting?

It would be very nice if those huge copyright-holding publishing megahouses provided print-on-demand service but they generally don't, they are more focused on trying to make reselling of used books a punishable crime.

I doubt they even could for a book from 1971; word processors and computerized layout that could really handle a book were still in the future. Even in 1981, TeX was only 3 years old. I imagine any masters for it were destroyed, lost, or melted down in the intervening 50+ years.

So the best anyone, even the publisher, could do would be to ask the Library of Congress for a photocopy.

However, I firmly agree that not providing it for sale at a reasonable rate (no higher than the original sale price of a generally-available hardback edition, adjusted for inflation) should end copyright. You made it, you released it, you wanted to profit from it: fine. You own those rights for a long time: don't like it, but not really what I want to argue. You're embarassed by it and don't want anyone to know you published it: hey, man, if you sold it to the public, ever, you put it out there, and if you later decide you don't want to any more, well, you should not have published and taken advantage of copyright protection.