There is a really simple way around this, used only by everybody online this century: set up a fan organization and allow your so-called "interns" to do volunteer work. Make it a collaborative community, and give some fricking minimal thought to quality control by means of a voting system, and your problem is solved.

It's 2009. Why is the owner of the Mavericks not aware of this sort of thing? Answer: he wants full ownership control of the resulting content. But he doesn't want to pay for it - that would make him less of a billionaire. So actual volunteer work is out. He wants the benefits of ownership without the disadvantage of paying people.

The government is right, here. Unpaid work for somebody who fully owns the results and benefits from it directly is a scam. It's spec work for God's sake, and I certainly see plenty of people coming out of the woodwork decrying that every time it comes up. Yet here, everybody's piling on the government for trying to prevent a billionaire from taking advantage of a bunch of out-of-work creative staff.

(If people want "valuable experience", there's no shortage of volunteer work that won't involve a billionaire laughing all the way to the bank.)