You should read the article you linked. Its actually a very good discussion of the subject.

Technically, you are correct - there is a such thing as a legal unpaid internship, according to some interpretations of the law. This would be when the student gets more out of it than the business.

However, most unpaid internships, such as the one WePay discussed in its last post, are clearly illegal.

At best, this is a "gray area". It sounds like you and I had different conclusions from the same source. What I took away from it is that the statute on the books has this hard-to-interpret notion of benefit to the employer, that is often interpreted to mean more benefit than cost. More importantly, what I got from the article was an explanation and examples of the lack of enforcement against those offering unpaid internships -- regardless of the legislation. Only from the enforcement of the law can we really know what the law is.

So, A) you were technically wrong and B) you are still wrong in practice.

As a decision maker, I need information about threats and opportunities. As a tinkerer, I like knowing minutiae. My response both indicated the functional value of unpaid internships as not a legal threat and provided a link to a reasonable discussion of the technicalities.

Your statement "You should read the article you linked" doesn't add to the conversation, except as an attack at me. Even if you did not intend it as such, in this circumstance you are suggesting that I did not do my homework (when in fact I was helping observers of our interchange by providing sources.) While I thank you for leading me down the path of exploring this legal oddity, I'd rather you left out aspersions.