[wlesieutre]

I think it's possible? The activation lock doesn't happen at the hardware level, it's when you're setting up and activating the phone. It has to ask Apple's servers "can I activate this?" and Apple makes you sign in with the Apple ID that it's locked to before authorizing it. Doesn't seem like there should be any technical reason that a "Request permission from registered owner" option wouldn't work as well.

[wlesieutre]

Missed the edit window, but a potential hiccup with this is wiping of user data off of the storage. Once Apple says "yeah you can activate it" I'm not sure if they could enforce a disk wipe. Maybe the data is encrypted with something linked to your Apple ID, and reactivation means the data is junked? Not sure how that works.