Anyone with a  video recorder can copy videos for his friends [check this–how effective is current protection?]. Nonetheless, video rental stores remain in business. They inexpensively provide their customers with an enormously larger selection than they could get by copying their friends' cassettes. The stores themselves cannot safely violate copyright law, buying one cassette for a hundred outlets, because they are large, visible organizations. So producers of movies continue to get revenue from video cassettes, despite the ability of customers to copy them.