Did you know that right now you can get a handful of Akira Kurosawa films for free? Like, as in legally for free? That's right! The nice people over at Japan Probe have pointed out that some of the master's films have fallen into the public domain. Archive.org has them available for download right this second. Among the Kurosawa offerings are Ikiru, Nora Inu, They Who Step on Tiger's Tail, Sugata Sanshiro and Rashomon, which I'm downloading right now. 

You can get the films in a number of formats: 64kb and 256kb mp4 for your iPod, mpeg1 and mpeg2 for your computer/DVD player. The largest file size is almost 4 gigs, so you can be sure that the quality will not be lacking. Anyway, it's effin FREE! There is no reason everyone reading this shouldn't immediately go and start grabbing.

Oh, and you can also stream the films from the site. Sort of a "try before you don't buy." AND you can embed them. Check out Rashomon after the jump.

This is the internet at its finest.