Bottom of the Food Chain

Is it any wonder that writers feel like they are at the bottom of the food chain? All they have of any value in this world is their work, and writers have--of necessity--become very protective of their work. Everyone else in the world, it sometimes seems, wants to take another slice of the pie and leave barely a crumb left for the poor starving writer.

Take, for example, electronic rights. Shouldn't writers receive fair compensation for their work when it is made available for download? Shouldn't writers be paid everytime someone downloads their work or everytime their work is included in a database? Since electronic rights were not mentioned in many older contracts, shouldn't those rights belong to the writer and not the publisher until such time as they are negotiated and the writer paid for a license? What do you think?