When I read about Universal Music Group suing and eBay trader I assumed I must be missing something. The gist is that a guy was selling rare promotional copies and the record company claims to own them. They argue they leant the copies to the radio stations or journalists and as a consequence he has no right to resell them. Sounds reasonable to me.

What I really don’t understand is why they care. The records are worth little to the record company. They wouldn’t care if the record was sat gathering dust in a radio station basement. Why attack someone who is supplying fans with what they want?

It could be simple greed. Perhaps they just want to ensure he doesn’t profit from their products. But that doesn’t make much sense because if that’s true they need to start suing HMV and co.

I think it’s probably due to a scared company with an overly active legal department. Baffling…