The DMCA or Digital Millenium Copyright Act tries to circumnavigate this by throwing in all sorts of mumbojumbo with respect to copy-protected material, but the principle has yet to be tested before the courts, mostly because the music and film industries are still hung up on "catching the pirates."
Fortunately, laserdisc videos are neither digital nor copy protected. I think they fall under the old regime of backup copies and shifting media to another format. Such actions only become illegal if you have to break some hare-brained weak crypto scheme to undertake them. Star Wars laserdiscs are also going real cheap on eBay these days; you can probably get the whole trilogy for less than the cost of the new DVDs. (please oh please no one outbid me)