Yes, but they both doubled their revenue while undercutting Disney, so the potential payoff was very large. Plus, the stipulation that "codes are not for sale _or transfer_" seems to be a particularly egregious stipulation that may be overly broad, thus arguable.
They can say what they want. The law doesn’t agree. You reply “fuck you, sue me”.
Libraries have been doing what redbox did for a long time. One of the studios sent a local library a nasty letter, and the library replied with a nasty letter. Nothing happened.
I’ll say it another way, just because it’s on the box doesn’t mean they can legally limit you. So yeah they can put whatever they want but we’ll see if it holds up.
RB steered people into renting dvds for $1.50 or purchasing download codes for $7.99 instead of purchasing the movie for $19.99.
Instead of $199.90 for ten sales, the studio got $19.99 and RB got from $15.00 to $79.90. That's definitely undercutting. Whether it is illegal or not is tbd in court.
Distribution deals won't give you the DVD (which is all Redbox really wants) for as cheap as $RETAIL less $DOWNLOAD, which is what RB is effectively paying
