As long as it's the businesses that foot the bill then I really can't complain right? However when it comes to free interns the consequences are either paid for by the people, or it's limited to those that can afford to go without a pay check. If I'm paying for someone's rent and food stamps while they get an education / experience / whatever as an intern, then I'd feel better if I knew it was a respectable education / experience etc.
I simply do not believe free internships will give me this piece of mind. On a case by case basis, sure there are probably plenty of great free opportunities, but this is shark infested waters imo. I think the majority will see very little benefit if the floodgates were opened.
It also sounds like the way you run your ship is very ethical and mature. While I'm sure plenty of other business would be just as fair, I highly doubt they would be the majority. In fact I think you would be part of a very small minority. The words Free Interns would attract a lot of attention. Maybe there should be a qualifying process that a company could go through to have this right? Similar to government grants maybe.
re: No Spec - yes, it's a position I sympathize with but at the same time, I don't believe any of these markets operate in a vacuum. Given the tensions in the spec market (or any service that seeks to be sold based on price/free), over time it seems almost inevitable that it attracts the bottom end of the market. It's the same reason why I try to make sure I don't underpay employees or service providers as the cost can be far greater in the long run if you do.
re: large amounts of data entry. Having had to do it at one time for a professor, though I was paid, being paid did make me feel as if I had an obligation to do it as right as possible without allowing bad data to fall through the cracks. I'd like to think I was better than that but frankly if I wasn't paid I suspect I would not nearly have been as careful. But that's the thing - sometimes you get what you pay for - and especially for the more menial tasks if you don't value the output that's fine but there was still a cost for the professor to manage the project and there was indeed value to the underlying data that he needed to be accurate. Indeed - often the cost of the overhead is a significant cost of the underlying wages - even more so I suspect for entry level positions.
Such is the case for managing volunteers or unpaid interns for which I don't really see too much of a differentiation. The way I see it is that unpaid work is essentially producing a sample of your work for sale. Sure you don't want to keep on doing it, but at least in a market these things tend to work themselves out. As for spec work (or any industry that provides free samples) - are also of the view that this should be made illegal?