> depends on what country you live in. Not everyone lives in the USA
As anti-DRM circumvention laws are a requirement of membership of the WTO, there are very few functioning countries that do not have them. The US law is not exceptional, nor even particularly stringent in this area.
I'm pretty sure you are allowed to "rip dvds" (and circumvent their protection in the process) to do so, for backup, in Italy. I think it might apply to the whole EU, but I could be wrong
No, you aren't. Italy has an anti-circumvention law that expressly prohibits this, and that law is a codification of an EU directive common across the entire EU.
You are allowed backup unprotected DVDs in Italy, but not protected ones.