It may already be too late. Houzz appears to be using the images posted by professional photographers to illustrate editorial stories they create for the front of the site.
One photographer was contacted by a staff writer to find out who built what was depicted in the images with no mention of licensing the images for this reuse.
It’s not unusual for social media sites to have onerous terms when it comes to posting your images on their site. Generally this is because they have to host the images on servers which may be located anywhere in the world and repost the images at will for other people to see. To solve this they take all your rights… We’re all suspicious of what might come next but so far that’s been the extent of what they do. Houzz has taken the first step in reuse that should be of great concern for professional photographers. Paying writers to create editorial content with images uploaded to the site competes directly with existing editorial outlets that pay for a similar use. So not only are they ripping off photographers they’re stealing readers from outlets with their free content. And as Houzz works towards a profitable business model they will start selling advertising against their freely obtained content… and their evil plan will be complete.
No matter what media giant you tend to load your photos too, they may have that problem where they use your photos. Houzz has now joined the ever growing list of sites to be concerned about.