Disney pulls PIRATES 3 trailer from YouTube

The trailer for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END is supposed to debut this evening during DANCING WITH THE STARS, but this post at Cinematical supposedly points you to a version of the trailer (dubbed in Russian) at YouTube.Com.

Only one problem: if you click through the link to the video, you get this message: “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by the Walt Disney Company.”

Wow, that was fast!

The funny thing about it is that coming attractions trailers are usually considered public domain, for reasons that are not too hard to figure out: companies pay millions of dollars to networks to air them for publicity purposes, so it’s hard for them to turn around and pretend that they are suffering some kind of financial hardship when someone else displays them for free.

I don’t know the legal intricacies of this particular case, but I assume Disney’s claim is based on their desire to roll out the trailer the way they see fit; they don’t want its debut on network TV scooped by an appearance on the Internet.

Whether they have a strong legal claim to shut down the trailer, I imagine YouTube simply doesn’t want to butt heads with the big company. After all, YouTube has enough copyright infringement headaches right now, what with Viacom claiming a billion dollars in damages.

Anyway, since you don’t get to see the trailer (yet), here’s a photo to tide you over until DANCING WITH THE STARS…