A Japanese judge has ruled that all movies made before `1953 are now in the public domain. A 2004 law extended copyrights for another 20 years, but the judge ruled that the law did not act retroactively, meaning that any movie that went into the public domain before that time will stay in the public domain.

You can fully expect this ruling to be challenged. Film studios have gone to extreme measures to ensure that they hold perpetual rights to content, using the legal fiction that a corporation is a virtually immortal person. In the United States, copyright creep has been going on for some time, the most recent having been a new 20-year extension to the pre-existing law that said copyrights last for 50 years after the death of the author (or 75 years for a corporate authorship); this extension was called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act by many, as it was seen to be a means of allowing Disney to hold on to exclusive rights of Mickey Mouse and other characters.

So, if you live in Japan, go ahead and copy all those golden oldies like Gone with the Wind, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Wizard of Oz, and sell them on the street corner–it’s all legal now.

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Taku Yamasaki of Japan’s conservative LDP party has made public statements recently to the effect that it would be unconstitutional for Japan to use its military forces to attack North korean Military bases. Of course, he’s the same crazy guy who has suggested that official visits by politicians to Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are enshrined, are also “strongly suspected” to be unconstitutional.

Japan has been considering possible pre-emptive attacks since North Korea seems to have both atomic weapons and the missiles needed to send them to Japan. Japan’s constitution forbids any military action except for self-defense (hence Japan’s military bearing the name “Self-Defense Forces”).

The problem: “self-defense” is a slippery slope. Consider, for example, that Japanese right-wingers often call WWII, including Pearl Harbor, a “pre-emptive attack” intended wholly in the spirit of “self-defense.” As Bush has aptly demonstrated, as long as you have a good propaganda machine, any war can be justified as “self-defense.”

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Use a gun, pay ¥50,000: a Japanese police officer in Nagasaki was in on the questioning of a man suspected in a minor crime (removing the door of a police box). Now, we’ve all heard about Japanese police officers using violent force to elicit confessions from suspects, causing a great many innocent people to be imprisoned while the guilty parties go free. This case seems to be a classic example of that.

The officer, named Norihiko Irie, got fed up when the suspect professed his innocence. So Irie unholstered his gun and pointed it at the man, threatening him with deadly force. Apparently, Irie also put the gun and five bullets on the desk in front of the man, and neighbors to the police box where the incident took place say that he was also walking around screaming and uttering nonsensical remarks, like shouting the word “Mongolian!”

Later it was discovered that Irie had argued with the man a few days earlier over the man’s driving, and had called the suspect and perhaps another man to the police box to accuse him of removing the police box door as well. It also turned out that Irie had been accused earlier of inappropriate sexual conduct (fondling) by a woman who came to the police box to report lost property.

After the incident with the gun, Irie was brought up on charges of “suspicion of committing acts of violence as a public official” and for “violating the Swords and Firearms Control Law.” He denied ever pointing the gun at anyone. Although Irie was convicted, the judge suspended his three-year sentence, punishing him with nothing more than a ¥50,000 fine, saying that “There is no fear of him committing the same crime again, and he made an apology.”

Oh, well, he made an apology. Yeah, I know that counts for more in Japan than elsewhere, but we are talking about a public officer of the peace threatening someone with deadly force to elicit a confession. Somewhere, I think a line was crossed. Hell, the press reports don’t even make it clear that he was even fired. He was transferred from the police box in January, shortly after the crime, but no more word than that. I would only hope that someone convicted of a crime like that would not be allowed to remain employed by the police, and absolutely never allowed near a gun again.