This is by far the most unethical business situation that I have recently heard about and I feel it would be good to share it with fellow professionals.
Another architectural photographer I know was asked a few months ago to join a private forum being advertised as only open to professional photographers who work in the hospitality market. The purpose of the forum was to allow for a place where pros could talk about business dealings, something not possible on an open forum, such as this one, where potential clients could be listening in.
After a decent amount of photographers joined a question was posed on how to handle transfer of licensing to companies who buy businesses that you shot for. This went back and forth and eventually the photographer I know gave his two cents. Basically he pointed out that the reason our industry has taken a hit is because so many photographers are willing to cave so easily to client's unruly demands, many of whom actually do the complaining, and that he plans to stand strong and not give his work away for free. He also recommended that others do the same.
Shortly thereafter, his rep received an email from a major hotel brand (he did not say who; he is too professional to do so) stating that his business would not be needed for any future projects and that he was being removed from the preferred vendors' list. In the email, his quote, verbatim, from the CLOSED forum was given as the reason for this.
After finding this out, he tried to log onto the forum only to find that the forum no longer existed. Even the page required to log in was no more.
Either the hotel chain purposely created a closed forum as a ruse to weed out photographers on their vendors' list or another photographer created this closed forum with the purpose of using quotes against his competition, although I feel it is mostly likely the former due to how quickly the forum disappeared and only one hotel brand acted.
I find this to be one of, if not the most, unethical situation I have yet heard while being a professional photographer. Word to the wise, be wary of wolves in sheep's clothing.