Those with concerns about the legality/morality of these platters need to relax a little and follow the groove; sure, the economic and the political are important aspects, but first the music.

As suggested in the descriptive "ugly", there's no detailed ableton-based tweaking here. Theo wields his Akai like a machete, radically reshaping these classic tracks for optimum late-night basement dancefloor performance. And of course EQ'ing the hell out of them in typical Parrish fashion.

The most direct and elemental of these raw and uncompromising productions (the love i lost, sugarhill gang) are prime-time disco destroyers, the more difficult and slower burning cuts (jill scott, slowly surely) will reward the patient listener with personal revelations and unrepeatable 7am communal daylight denial moments.

Important music.

I think this is interesting -- illegitimate activity or artistic creative licence?
(I'm talking outside of the legal vs. illegal as given under the law of any specific country and the question of whether you are allowed to use the original artists work or not, kind of morality here. But rather much more about the rights the original artist has for personal control, perhaps, but not always, through to payment over their work!)

Just to be difficult, my opinion falls somewhere between the two. The issue here is that Theo is very creatively adapting work of original artists and adding much extra production, often in a subtle way which the listener cannot quite comprehend in any real way, all done in order to re-understand the original work.
Whilst we the listener often enjoy (or distain) what he may have done, or indeed not done, to the original work; in my opinion the former tends to be the case. Love it or hate it though, it deserves merit for it's shear creative imagination by Theo.
And I and many others happen to like most of it, with just a few tracks that personally leave me cold.

The issue of rights the original artist has over their work is somewhat of a minefield...
If Theo is profiting from the sale, which he clearly must be in a minor way (given the small pressings of these things) then he must be in the wrong, right? But then we must ask, if he went to any of the record companies that control the licensing of the original artists work, would they in fact allow any of it to be released legitimately?
This is the unknown. But given the past record of many a record company, the answer is more likely than not to be he is NOT ALLOWED to release. And more over, even if he tried to get the companies themselves to release his version, they would surely deem it uncommercial in both sound (very underground) and profitability (not enough profit to justify the outlay or costs) terms.
This then leads on to the ARTIST control, and the answer here is really that of Chinese whispers. Once you have put something out into the world, it forms part of the thoughts and influences that others may draw upon, so you really have no control, or right to control, over your work after this. You make your money, like all of us need in order to survive, by people who like your work parting company with their cash for decent 'proper' pressings through the legitimate channel of your record company/label releasing, and getting distributed, your work.

So where does this leave the creative person like Theo with a demand for their work? Either they don't bother, and we the fans don't get to have a copy unless a CDR makes it's way into our hands (somehow unlikely), as well as Theo not getting paid for his creative efforts. Or he is forced into pressing it under the oldest form of releasing "unlicensed" music: THE WHITE LABEL.
And as mentioned previously, due to the highly limited pressings of these things, there is just enough money for him alone to make a living at it, so paying the original artists anything is just not viable. If he were making more than enough profit from it, then a jesture of goodwill to them might perhaps be justifiable.

Such is life...

Some say that some of these truly Ugly Edits have been bootlegged but what Mr. Parrish is busy with nowadays (probably due to lack any remaining creativity and imagination) is just as close as bootlegging.
At least when Greg Wilson output re-edits on Tirk, this records company fixes clearance terms with the track's copyrights holders', so that it turn up to be a legitimate release (such as with any official remixes), EMI does the same for it's brilliant OST series.
In Theo Parrish case it's not done so but pirate style, this is why it looks like promo copies, test pressings or white labels.
There is no much wrong with that way of doing in my view in such limited quantity but if then in turn Parrish's edits are pressed again by others and in turns these are judged by his own fan base as rip-off copies, this is shear non-sense. At least West-End or Unidisc do release their respective back catalogues legitimately: at some level to the benefit of their own artists (not like Trax or DJ Int. who never dealed fair with anyone) and anyway music on such re-issues are way better and deeper in scope than with any of such indeed -Ugly- Edits. So please, stop spreading here and there on how Theo Parrish is such a creative genius.