I am ashamed that I hadn’t reasoned this through given all the rubbish digital services have pulled with “purchases” being lies.
Remember that there were also big campaigns against tape recorders and VCR. They even managed to get VCR vendors to implement a feature that prevents users from skipping ads. So it’s not like it’s simply legal, the media corps were just not as successful in their lobbying as they are today.
I can’t find anything about VCR’s blocking; I did find a bunch saying the opposite.
There were copy protections that prevented a VHS -> VHS copy being made of some movies. Easily defeated, but they did exist.
My scenario was recording an Over The Air transmission onto VHS using a VCR; not making a backup copy of a movie you purchased on VHS.
Edit: I do recall a campaign against VHS recording of TV shows, but didn’t it ended basically saying “Broadcast public == public domain”?. That actually led to copy protections in VHS tapes.
