Payola still "business as usual"

Do humans have genetic some predisposition to repeating history and some blockage that prevents people from learning from recognizing and learning from the mistakes of the past?

We're just hearing about lawsuits involving payola to record companies in the "good old days" of radio.

Now, according to this article, MicroSoft is doing pretty much the same thing. ...

Microsoft has announced that it will be giving a cut of the sales of its Zune portable music player to the Universal Music Group in order to create closer ties with record companies and steal market share away from Apple’s iPod. Microsoft has made similar offers to the other major labels.

If successful, Microsoft’s move could lead to higher prices for portable media players ... The move could backfire, though, since more and more people are using portable players to listen to podcasts and indie music. ...

The major label RIAA members have been looking for ways to get a cut from digital music players ...

The best we can hope for, I guess, is that the monopolistic moguls outsmart themselves and the whole thing does backfire.