I looked up some things.
There were two C64 based products from two different companies that used the same ASIC. So
I don't think the companies own the intellectual property rights on the chip.. They
have the rights to their products.
Rumor is that Mammoth ordered many ASICs that were never used. To bad those couldn't
be released to the public for people to make their own stuff.
Also there are browsers and telnet apps for the C64
Web browsers for the C64
Hyperlink
http://www.armory.com/~spectre/cwi/hl/
Singular Browser
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=30400
Ethernet hardware/software for the C64
http://home.ica.net/~leifb/commodore/ethernet.html
I just think that this would be a quicker solution.
Or everyone can donate their C64s, but I doubt the power supplies will survive.