I actually have no idea if this is even feasible in the fashion industry, I was just using a similar (fictitious) internship as what was described in the blog as an example. And the key is that an internship should be indicative of the business. Either way, the intern would have lost that week or two (even if they recognize it was a bunk internship), and the position would be open again if the business wanted to continue it. Without the protection from unpaid internships, businesses are free to exploit low-skilled labor in order to perform low to no (monetary) cost for experimentation.

There is a cost to managing any project. Presumably even if for PR, one wants the PR to result in a good impression of your company? So yes, lose a week or two, does that seem so bad at the individual level? It would probably end up costing the company even more in time to filter the work. It's also not frictionless to find new staff - whether paid or unpaid.

I'm not sure I see how your example is similar to Mark Cuban's example. For instance, conducting surveys (one of the tasks Cuban was talking about having interns accomplish) is part of a wide range of professional fields -- including experimental psychology (according to my girlfriend with the psychology degree), political analysis (according to major news networks), and usability testing.

> Either way, the intern would have lost that week or two (even if they recognize it was a bunk internship)

. . . and what else would they have done during that time?

Sometimes, one must try two or three things to find one that's worthwhile. Should I then be able to bring suit against a software developer whose software wasted a week of my time before I decided it wasn't doing me any good, before I moved on to something better?