At the start of every movie released on DVD it states that it is illegal to copy it.
The ability to create copies of the media you've purchased for personal use is a long-accepted facet of the fair-use doctrine in U.S. copyright law (at least,
it used to be). However, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) states that it's illegal to break the CSS copy-protection mechanism employed by most commercial DVD movies. What does that mean? Most fair-use advocates say that the policy directly contradicts U.S. copyright law, but the DMCA seems to indicate that
you cannot make a copy of a commercial DVD, even for personal use, and you certainly cannot give a copied DVD to anyone or watch copied DVD files on your computer. We assume that fair use will eventually catch up and be established as a safety valve for consumers (which has been the pattern with previous technologies, such as VHS), but for now, the territory is still uncertain and a bit dangerous.
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3513_7-5128652-1.html