Based on the previous posts some may be confused about what Handbrake can do. It does strip copy protections (CSS) to allow movies to be compressed. In addition, Macrovision and Region Coding aren't tranferred. I've created +30 mpeg4 movies using only Handbrake and an encrypted DVD, only failing with 1 (that would actually go half way). These include old and new movies. I refuse to believe that all of them had no copy protections, considering the old way I would do it (using DVDBackup) would always display the hex code used to decrypt the disc. It would also let you know when a disc was not encrypted, which I found on 2 occassions.
The primary source of "protection", especially in the beginning, was CSS encoding, which was not copy protection (and hence my comment). Yes, Handbrake deals with CSS. It does NOT however, deal with any of the many forms of copy protection that were subsequently added to some DVDs. These things included defective sectors, empty sectors, etc, which Handbrake will NOT deal with. Copy protection was MUCH more common a few years ago when the studios appeared to briefly have the upper hand. However as the format matured and prices fell, and especially with the looming high-def format, most region 1 DVDs are now produced without copy protection.
Again, the emphasis is on "copy protection", not on CSS. The disks all have CSS encryption, they simply don't have extra copy protection, which is licensed by various vendors and hence costs the studios additional money if they chose to use it.
Macrovision is an anti-analog copy protection, which prevents the analog stream from being copied with a VCR. It doesn't prevent someone from making a copy of the digital disk.