True... But it isn't so much that as it is that their mistreatment is still legal. I don't think all house elves shouldbe freed; I just think that their enslavement should be a choice,not a requirement. If a house-elf wants freedom, it should be able to free itself, and there should be some sort of requirements about their working conditions. I'm fairly sure it's legal for a wizard to live in the grandest house in the world with plenty of spare rooms, but keep 29 house-elves in a tiny outhouse, give them so much work that they never have time to clean it, punish them severely because they haven't cleaned it and this person expected them to do so (using the excuse that no sane creature would ever refuse to clean something so filthy if they lived there, so it therefore must have been a reasonable thought, apparently), and—well, you get the point. There are countless horrible things you can do to house-elves. It's unfair. And they're not even allowed to use wands! Try as I might, I simply can't think of any reason for this, except possibly that an enslaved elf could learn the Imperius curse and use it to force his/her owner to  give him/her clothes, but that's a bit hard to visualize, and it would be completely pointless if enslavement was optional. Unless it's because they have magic of their own which needs no wand, but in that case, maybe there should have been a law forbidding Dumbledore from using one. After all, he's frequently seen as working magic without a wand—summoning sleeping bags, for example. So there's really no point in that law...