help vhs to dvd

I just bought a new RCA dual vhs to dvd machine which works fine for my own tapes from tv. My problem is when copying movie vhs (about 30 of them) which won't copy (pops up with "video is copy protected".
Any way of getting around this? Some of these tapes are 10-12 years old and i'm afraid they may get outdated and break the tapes.
Thanks in advance for any help.