Luke Tomaszewski, CEO and Founder of ProxyPics rolled out a LinkedIn post about how CoStar is suing Zillow over harvesting 46,000+ images illegally. Some years ago, I had interviewed him and found him to be pretty much on point about what we discussed. His article, though, misses the target. The argument put forward is that basically ProxyPics doesn’t scrape data and that they can track the photo all the way back to inception and thus all is well. Maybe, maybe not. Copyright is the key. Look, this isn’t beating up on ProxyPics whom have been steadily moving into our Industry. This is to document the fact that Management, ProxyPics included, doesn’t appear to be concerned about Labor’s copyright. Simply do a word search of ProxyPic’s article, and you will find that the word copyright is never used. Now, do they have a clause in their contract that automatically assigns the copyright? I don’t know. The issue is that photos taken in our Industry are primarily to document work being performed. There are a few exceptions like with Auction.com, but even there, the copyright is not transferred.
Ever had you or your children’s photo taken by say Olan Mills or Lifetouch for school, holidays, or prom? Give them a call and they will tell you they own the copyright to that photo and may use it as they see fit.
Whether the work is documenting the property or services rendered, I have never encountered a Contract wherein I released the copyright of my photos to anyone else. Safeguard Properties had attempted to force this, some years ago, and it miserably failed. And what everyone will agree upon is that they have seen, at some point, their photos on Zillow and other real estate platforms and were never compensated for such. When you contract with Labor to document a product and then repackage that product for profit and where even more money is made by other parties, you have an issue. For example, you do an occupancy check and then that photo ends up on Realtor.com or Zillow, your copyright is being violated, as I see it. Therein lies the rub, as the bard would say.
Copyright in photography is automatic upon creation. This means that the moment a photographer captures an image, they own the copyright to that photo. Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is not required for copyright protection to exist, but it is necessary to pursue legal action for infringement in federal court.
There is an ongoing heist in the mortgage field services industry that plays out with the click of a shutter. Field Service Technicians and Inspectors—already underpaid, overworked, and at the mercy of predatory order mills—are now finding their photographic documentation repurposed and monetized without a cent of compensation flowing back to them. The photos taken by Labor to prove grass was cut, debris removed, or a home was secured, are suddenly reappearing in real estate marketing databases, on listing sites like Zillow, or worse, licensed to third-party data brokers with no paper trail back to the originator. And while the hedge funds and venture-backed tech firms smile all the way to the bank, Labor remains unaware that their intellectual property is now lining the pockets of the same firms that enforce chargebacks for blurry submissions.
The issue came into public focus after CoStar Group filed a lawsuit against Zillow, alleging unauthorized use and monetization of listing photos. But what the lawsuit does not address—and what neither CoStar nor Zillow want to discuss—is the upstream origin of many of these images. Field Service Technicians and Inspectors are the original authors of a significant portion of the visual evidence used in property databases. These photos are snapped under the harshest conditions—rain, snow, and often in dangerous, blighted neighborhoods—all to meet absurd deadlines and dodge the punitive penalties buried in bloated subcontract agreements. Yet, despite this labor, the industry treats the product of that work as communal property to be carved up, resold, and traded like pork bellies on a commodities exchange.
The crux of the problem lies in the deliberate obfuscation of copyright ownership in contracts issued by National Association of Mortgage Field Services (NAMFS) members. The average Independent Contractor Agreement (ICA) or Master Services Agreement (MSA) contains clause after clause asserting the right to withhold payment, demand photo standards, and penalize errors. But rarely, if ever, do these contracts stipulate that the copyright to images is being transferred, sold, or sublicensed. In most cases, they don’t even broach the topic. This omission is not accidental. It is a calculated maneuver designed to deprive Labor of rightful ownership and prevent them from seeking recourse when their photos are resold in bulk to third-party data syndicates.
To be clear, copyright law in the United States is unambiguous: the creator of a photograph holds the copyright the moment the shutter clicks, unless they have explicitly assigned those rights elsewhere in writing. The fact that a technician took the photo with their own equipment, in their own time, and submitted it as documentation of work completed does not negate their ownership unless a clear legal transfer has occurred. Yet these images are uploaded to platforms operated by companies like MCS, Safeguard Properties, Cyprexx, and GIS Field Services, and from there they often disappear into the ether, only to reappear on MLS sites, property databases, or in marketing brochures. No permission was sought. No payment was made.
The scale of this theft is difficult to quantify, but anecdotal evidence suggests it is systemic. Inspectors report seeing their own images—ones they took months or even years prior—on Zillow listings for properties that have long since transferred hands. Field Service Technicians describe entire sets of before-and-after photos resurfacing in investor portals and asset management slideshows, stripped of metadata and attribution. In one case, a technician found photos from a cleanup job he completed being used by a local realtor in their promotional materials. When he inquired, he was told the images had been licensed by a vendor “through a database.”
The financial implications are enormous. These photos, collected across thousands of properties nationwide, constitute a vast, searchable archive of real estate conditions—data that is of immense value to marketing firms, valuation models, and AI training algorithms such as FoxyAI and others. They are effectively being used as free raw material to build the next generation of real estate tech platforms. And while the industry feigns ignorance, the reality is that many NAMFS members are double and triple-dipping. They collect from clients, chargebacks from Labor, and sell or license photos on the backend. This vertical integration of theft is not just unethical—it is criminal under any fair reading of intellectual property law.
Equally troubling is the silence surrounding these practices. There is no disclosure to Labor that their work product will be resold. No opt-in clauses. No royalty-sharing mechanisms. The entire apparatus is built upon a culture of coercion and exploitation, where technicians and inspectors are told that speaking out risks deactivation or blacklisting. And the few who have attempted legal redress find themselves up against corporations with entire departments dedicated to arbitration and indemnification. The cost of fighting often exceeds the value of the stolen work.
The role of hedge funds and private equity in enabling this theft cannot be overstated. Firms like Littlejohn & Co., which now control MCS and a swath of other preservation and inspection outfits, have potentially turned the industry into a data mine. Their acquisitions are not about improving field services—they are about consolidating control over the flow of data, images, and property intelligence. Every photo taken by Labor is another digital asset in their growing portfolio, and they treat it as if they own it by divine right. Meanwhile, those who risk their lives climbing into mold-infested attics or wading through knee-deep trash to get the “required angle” are left with pennies and chargebacks.
What the industry desperately needs is legal clarity and enforcement. Labor must begin pushing for copyright acknowledgments in all contracts. State attorneys general must investigate the resale of photos obtained under false pretenses. The Federal Trade Commission should look into whether there are violations of consumer protection laws, particularly as photos submitted for maintenance compliance are ending up in commercial property listings. And perhaps most crucially, there must be a collective organizing effort—led by groups like the International Association of Field Service Technicians (IAFST)—to educate and empower workers to assert their intellectual property rights and the creation of an AI Bill of Rights.
Until then, the theft will continue. Photos will be snapped, uploaded, stripped of metadata, and shuffled into the digital mills where they are monetized a hundred times over. Labor will remain in the dark, unaware that the same photo that cost them a chargeback last week is now selling real estate in Miami or training AI bots in Seattle. And the hedge funds will keep harvesting, knowing full well that as long as Labor doesn’t know its rights, the cameras will keep clicking and the profits will keep flowing. This is not just a story of economic exploitation—it is a story of erasure. Labor, already invisible to the banks and asset managers they serve, is being written out of the very evidence of its existence. Every stolen photo is a reminder that the mortgage field services industry remains built upon a foundation of silence, suppression, and stolen labor. If that foundation ever cracks, it won’t be from the weight of lawsuits or regulations—it will be from Labor finally demanding to be seen.
