sorry I can't reply on an existing thread, so I have to post it as new answer.

First of all I am not defending the existing model, just explaining what is going on:

EDIT: Handing over the authoring rights is a kind of ensurance for the journal. Fact is that it's also a hurdle to make it more difficult to republish the same paper, which in fact any intellectual owner could do, by rewriting the paper from scratch, with the same findings, but using other words. But then again: For an academic is it about just writing papers or getting your articles in renoumed journals? If it's the latter just compare yourself to poor musicians aproaching a big music label wich promises them fame, lots of tours and worldwide distribution channels.

EDIT2: Coverage and exposure are non-monetary compensations for handing over author's rights and partial distribution rights.

EDIT3: please take into account too, that academc knowledge pretty often is not absolute, but has a half-life. The nowledge of today, in some nearer future may be outdated (an example I love is psychotherapy and electroshocks, music compression algorithms or media (remember DAT or Mini-Discs?))

 - First of all probably we would have to define which royalities we're talking about. There are author's rights, distribution rights and copyrights. And some universites hande it different. In my case for example, when finishing my thesis, I had to give partial distrbution rights to my university, and kept all the authoring rights. Not all universites handle it the same way.
       - Author's rights: Tipically they do and will always belong to you, but when you publish something (in a journal, university press or as a book) you agree to the reproduction by definition.
       - Distribution Rights: You offer a partial distribution right to the journal in the moment you offer your paper for publication. (one time-distribution). That is actually the same distribution right your university gets of any paper and work you produce as long as you're studying or working there. I think for that very reason academic work is normally royality free.
       - Copyrights: The rights to copy a distributed work itself, this is tipically owned by the journal in this case, and refers exlicitely of making a scan or a photocopy of the journal.
       - The Knowledge itself in the paper is not bound to any juridical law as far as I know (except the authorial rights), and that's the whole point of academic publishing: Share your knowledge, so that anybody can take up the idea, and construct on it. They will have to credit your work in the moment they use it as base for their work in the credits (that's why the academic world is so keen on mutual credits and footnotes). And by continuing your research you probably find tomorrow more important findings which are not covered in any agreement.
       - So please correct me but I do not see any logical royalities. The academic knowledge itself should be free, otherwise if you want to make earnings out of your knowledge, and find a company that is ready to pay for that, patent what you have found out, your algorithm, etc. and DO NOT PUBLISH IT. But as it is a thesis, etc. you have to publish it. Damn, that's a academic dilema ;-)

 - As mentioned: Academic work, as far as I know, is free from royality payments, in the sense that most universites follow the model that: Knowledge is free. If you found something very interesting and something which can be turn into market value, most likely your university will pay you and patent that technology, but as long as you've just produced common knowledge with your thesis, nowbody will like to pay for knowledge. IMAGINE: If every paper ever produced in a university would be intellectual property and just showed with money, we would propapbly still be in the industrial age... Specially in the Information Technology sector advances have been strong because of public papers, public and shared knowledge. Don't forget univiersities are there to produce public knowledge. You're in the wrong business if you want to make money. Public/academic research is only about fame, not money, private research is about money.

 - Off course you can publish your papers wherever you want, but if you go to a certain journal, you have to play by their rules. and if that rule is no royalities, so it is. It is like going to a job interview and asking more money and more holidays than they offer you initially, it will be hard to get the job.

 - why it is OK for publications to profit off of someone's work? Because you as an academic are doing the same: profitting from their work as a journal (editors, it's fame, it's outreach, etc.). It is actually known as a win-win deal: You get exposure with your paper, exposure bound to all the customers this journal already has, for free, but in most cases you renounce your royalities. Off course it seems unfair if they make tons of money with all the publications, but normally, as an author, you are free to see if you can monetarize your paper without any journal. Good luck!

 - The journals rose in times where there was no internet, no publications databases, no central repositories. Just some journals who had pretty much work in maintaing a certain cientific standard and additionally, or built on top of that, a stable and broad base of subscribers, ready to pay for it. The business model these days worked, because having a scientific journal was lots of work. Nowadays with the internet it's a little bit different, but not so much: When in earlier days there was too few public information available (hard to get to it) nowadays journals are a mass filter: they offer you a selection, so in any way, the old or the new one, journals are important filters, containing exclusive knowledge.

That being said, if you reduce everything to the money, you're in the wrong business.
Academic life is about knowledge and partially fame, not money, that is a well known fact. If you want money go to private research, but then you're probably bound to research what your employer wants, and not by your academic thrive.

If you think what you found out in your PhD or thesis can be monetarized, you're free to patent it, but otherwise, please follow the way hundreds and thousands of academics have gone before, and share your knowledge with the world. 

Closing I have found this interesting article which could shed a little bit of additional light. As I see there it depends nowadays on the journal and the contained areas, but as you can also see, it is more about the rights itself and the distribution and concentration of knowledge, than the money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_policies_of_academic_publishers