This right here, my cousin worked at a video store which usually threw out cassettes not deemed working order and we took those and overwrote them with other newer movies. Was pretty awesome having 2 vhs on top of each other then pressing play and record and watch the movie and save it at the same time, the future was limitless at that point!
Sort of reminds me of the IT guy at my high school who was shipped a crate of AOL floppies (I guess to distribute to the kids) who just moved the tabs and slapped a new label on them when he needed one.
i cant remember the setup exactly but play the video on one vhs and record it with the other, i remember not all tv's supporting it sorry its quite some years ago :)
Which elevates the transgression from plausible simple mistake to premeditated destruction. There’s not an issue with the technology here, great grandparent commenter has an issue with bad human behavior (notwithstanding faulty cassette manufacturing and defective VCRs, of course).