Vice and WWE
By Scott Keith on 19 September 2021
Vice has been going pretty ham at WWE and their culture being prone to and full of debauchery. I’m sure the WWE are thrilled.
This leads me to wonder, given their consistent use of WWE footage, can you give any thoughts why they haven’t persuaded legal action over it, simply to make the producer's lives more complicated and possibly get them to stop over the legal cost of producing the show? If the sale rumors are true, this series can’t be helping by highlighting so many issues.
I don't know. It's been argued that the footage is fair use because it's basically screenshots of WWE footage, but fair use is a legal defense after the fact and not a shield you can hide behind beforehand, so I'm surprised as well that we haven't heard of WWE trying to drop the hammer on them. Hell, you'd think they'd take issue with Vice using so much of their intellectual property and names and such as well. Maybe they made a deal beforehand? My own speculation was that Vince was essentially selling them the licensing beforehand but I don't know if anyone has actually come out and said how they're getting away with it.