Royalties are crap!

I was reading about this Kindle II thing being made and sold by Amazon. It seem that they have a cool feature... Text to Speech... in this hand-held device. Now it seems that Authors are getting all in an uproar about copy right infringement. I think that this is a load of crap.
I make things for a living. I make prototype models. I design and make parts for a wide variety of applications. Do I get a royalty every time some one uses the part? Do I get paid every time some one looks at the part... picks it up? NO, NO and NO! I get paid to make the part... the end. BUT some how "artists" musicians, actors, authors... and their attorneys... have created this system where in they get paid ever time one of their songs is heard, movies are seen, or books are sold. They got paid to make their product and now they get paid again and again and again? How is that right? It's not like musicians or actors or writers don't make enough money to produce their product... 20 Million Dollars to spend 3 months of your life making a movie? There is no way one person's time can be worth 20 million for three months work... no way. I understand that this is an economy of scale. LOTS of people will listen to the song, see this movie or read that book. It is ridiculous and I don't mean that the way they sling it around on "So You Think You Can Dance" to use hip speak.
Oh and in case you think I forgot about ball players; baseball, basketball, football... NO I haven't! If any one deserves a major league ball players salary its the Military or Firemen or the Police! Any persons job that has the possibility of dieing on the job written in to the job description. But then we couldn't afford that could we?