to say it's doing no favor to "the scene" is short sighted imo. In the short term, yes, it may slightly hurt the upfront scene consisting of a relatively small group of people who attend upfront soul nights where the music policy is based on the rarity / exclusivity of records possessed by the top DJs. I understand that hearing an exclusive tune that you waited months to hear and traveled to hear is a special experience for most of the 800 people attending the night.
In the long run, however, it will get many more people into soul 45 collecting and get many more nights started where collectors eventually will seek out rare original 45s. That seems more sustainable that the elite group of (mostly older) people who travel to hear specific rare records.
Moreover, it seems unlikely that DJs on that particular scene will try to pass off any represses as originals. It would be like blasphemy and they would get excommunicated quickly. The people who go to the upfront scene still can participate the same way they did before. Also, the point was already made that the box is not mostly northern records. So is it really true that it's better to withhold a box that contains the potential to get much new blood (e.g. from the US) into "the scene" than potentially (but not really imo, if the policy is "OVO") ruining a couple records for a couple DJs?
Finally, I've made this point before, a scene should be built on DJs putting together great sets of great music. Not DJs dropping $$$$s on a few expensive records. That type of exclusivity is unsustainable in the digital age -- similar to how "information wants to be free". If you think you can keep a record uncirculated / unknown / unrecorded for very long in the global internet age, you're not being realistic. If people can already hear the records on their computers, does it ruin the specialness of traveling to an event to hear the original? if not, then how does a repress which wouldn't be allowed at that event anyways ruin the specialness?