ThePastor is right. Your VHS to DVD machine is intended to let you make DVDs of your own personally made VHS tapes, say of your kids or family reunions or whatever. Yes, they should have made that clear on the box, but then they would never sell any.

I have a SIMA Video CopyMaster that I pass VHS video through to strip the macrovision out. I don't know if you have outputs for the VHS side of your Emerson that you can feed to inputs of the DVD side, but patching the CopyMaster in between would solve your problem. If you have another VCR, you could make a VHS copy of your VHS with the CopyMaster in between, then use the copy to make a DVd from in your Emerson.

I'll let you worry about the legallity of copying a copyrighted tape.