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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the idea of an internship about learning, not about producing? If your producing for the company something they are selling (or creating net value), don't you have to get paid? I mean, people here are talking about actually working on projects the company is earning money for. That's not an internship.

Am I clueless, or are other people just ignorant?

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If you're in the US, you're absolutely right, and other people are ignorant. You can't use unpaid interns like free workers, even for menial work like updating websites or e-mailing prospects... yet several HN regulars have advocated doing exactly that before. It's not legal.

Are you making a moral argument, or a legal one? If legal, what country?

The "idea of an internship" is experience and networking if you're the intern, recruiting if you're a smart company, and free/cheap labor if you're a dumb company.

It's a matter of legality in the United States.

"Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer 'derives no immediate advantage' from the intern’s activities [. . .]" https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html

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