I read Carl Davis's DVD review of The First Samurai: Book of Five Rings Collection at http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=11524 and...
was wondering why would the reviewer recommend them over the Criterion ones if the picture quality isn't as good? Isn't that the point of a review?

I'm very interested in knowing how legit these DVDs are.

Are there copyright or other legal notes on the discs and/or films and packaging indicating these movies were liscensed from Toho?

I would not recommend these discs over the Criterion collection. In the review I only stated that for those who were more interested in the films themselves, but did NOT want to pay for the Criterion release, that this was a worthwhile investment.

The Criterion releases are vastly superior in Picture and Sound quality, as they did a full restoration on the prints. Crash Cinema's version is a transfer taken from a fairly decent print. Often, there are titles that people are curious about, but may not want to get the "Deluxe" editions (crazy, I know) and I think that this may be one of those cases.

As for the legitimacy of the release, there is no Toho logo at the beginning of the film as in the Criterion version, but on the packaging it states that "The Film contained in this DVD is distributed under license from the copyright owner..., etc." Crash Cinema, as I said in my review, seems to have pulled off quite a coup with this release. Criterion often loses distribution rights to their films, which is why so many of them go out of print on us.