You completely missed my point.

If unpaid internships become the norm, that is it becomes expected that a person has to perform a period of unpaid work as some kind of apprenticeship, then they will be forced to do so if they want a paid job at the end of it.

So I might walk away from an unpaid internship, but I'll still need to work unpaid in another internship until at such point employers deem that I've done my time.

Therefore the individual has no choice but to accept unpaid work - regardless of which company they happen to be working for.

It's a bad precedent that needs to be stamped out.