Possibly in some countries...

But at least in the US, it is a DMCA violation.

DMCA gets a little weird; Basically unless you're distributing it is a civil penalty (which, I could be wrong but would mean you'd get a Jury trial, even assuming it ever came up) and I doubt you would ever run into legal issues so long as you were only backing up for personal use.

It's where you get into distribution that anyone starts to care, and it's when you do distribution on a large scale that criminal penalties come into play.

However there may be countries where possession of an 'illegal number' or 'DRM Breaking software' is considered legal for personal use.

I am not a lawyer, but yeah I think there seems to be like a distinction in the United States between copying a "protected DVD" versus an unprotected one.

It's still sort of confusing to me because would that mean then that if you are making a personal backup in the United States, would it technically be allowed if you pointed a video camera at your own TV screen?

Yeah as I said, I doubt they’re going to send the FBI after you if you’re just ripping for your own backups; I think they care a lot more about people putting it on ThePirateBay or something.