"Let's accept that Mr Bulmer is acting entirely lawfully. He owns the assets, it's up to him what he does with them. As I understand it, he cannot yet be required to return the rights to the original artists if he doesn't want to make use of them himself.

Let us also accept that under the terms of the original contracts the original artists will receive no royalties if the albums are released. It may have been naive of them, but they signed the contracts and must live with the consequences.

The question no one seems to be able to get an answer to is, why?"

The impression I got (from that Bright Phoebus documentary) is simply financial (and petty). He believes he can't make any money out of them but isn't prepared to release them to anybody else. Perhaps because a part of him can't bear the thought that somebody else could do something - anything - with something he regards as his and his alone. I'd say that's probably it.

I think musicians should just publish and be damned though. In the case of Bulmer-owned releases, I think people should just file-share them like crazy.