YouTube takes down video taken of Transformers 3 set on public street

So imagine you head into your office one day, and find that an alley outside your window has been turned into a set for Transformers 3 — there are cameras and booms and you can hear Michael Bay yelling. They’re about to pneumatically fire a car down the street (it’s been Transformer-punched, you presume) so you whip out your iPhone and start recording. Up it goes on YouTube and… down it comes off YouTube after Viacom instructs it to be removed under pretense of “matching third party content.”

I imagine you’d be surprised, especially if the video your friend shot (the friend standing next to you, shooting the exact same video which you see above) didn’t get taken down. I know YouTube has to be on the lookout for copyright violations, but really now.

Here’s a screenshot, in case that one up top goes down too. Does this look like official footage from Transformers 3 — a movie which is still in production, by the way, thus making duplication impossible?

More details and analysis at TechDirt.

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