>It was pretty crazy though when movies were like $99 on VHS. Yes! They touched on this in the Netflix documentary The Last Blockbuster[1], where an old exec c

>It was pretty crazy though when movies were like $99 on VHS. Yes! They touched on this in the Netflix documentary The Last Blockbuster[1], where an old exec claims that any video copy displaced a huge number of movie viewings, so they came up with a high price to charge for them. It showed a picture of The Empire Strikes Back with a $99 price tag, which, if you assume it was 1982, would be like $290 today.[2] According to the documentary, that only changed after someone bought the (expensive) videos and started renting them out, which led to a court case that affirmed the First Sale Doctrine and said you had the right to do that. Then eventually, the video rental stores got the studios to agree to "have all the copies you want, as long as we get a cut of the rental revenues". [1] About the history of Blockbuster, framed around the last surviving location, a franchisee (in Bend, Oregon) that pays a fee to keep using the brand. [2] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/