Are Internships Helping You?

One of my good friends who goes to school in Boston recently said that he was striking out landing a job in the marketing field and he claimed he was going to now try to land an internship to get hopefully an inside track to a job. Now I have known some other people who loathed their internship experiences and I started to think about how while internships could lead to a potential job and it looks great on your resume are they helping as much as we think or are we getting as much out as we think.
I kept thinking about my friends who didn't like it and I wanted to figure out more (so I had something to blog about) about what internships are really doing for us. I rad an article about how college kids are starting to go looking for internships to get their foot in the door. The article said that many unpaid interns have complained they did menial work. The article brought up the question of what are the rules of unpaid internships and how does a company get away with not paying an "employee". There is little in the way from stoping companies from exploiting that free work to do menial jobs and worked as under glorified employees. The question still reamins though, are they good for you?
I guess it all comes down to how do you feel about the internship, is it a company worth dealing with being a lesser employee and and what point do you stop doing the internship and take a stand for yourself. Sometimes it may be worth putting up with some pain for the gain while others may not even be worth the start.