[ashelmire]

IANAL, but it is generally illegal to volunteer for a for-profit organization federally. See the Fair Labor Standards Act and Dept of Labor site [1].

The most relevant recent test I can find resulted in a settlement, when AOL paid people who contributed articles without payment[2]. There's been some conflicting decisions in other related cases and many are still in progress.

1.https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp 2. https://archives.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/aol_settled_with_...