"What am I missing?" The specs and the software for a start. Then there's the fact that it's not the spammers that will end up paying, but the people running

"What am I missing?" The specs and the software for a start. Then there's the fact that it's not the spammers that will end up paying, but the people running the systems that are compromised and abused to send spam, be they shared hosting servers or home computers. Then there's the network effect. I'm not going to feel good telling my friends and family that it will now cost them money to email me. Especially when they can just contact me using Facebook instead for free and without having to set anything new up. Especially when the email service they're already using probably wont even support this new fangled paid-email system. It would be a massive task to add this functionality to email, and it wouldn't stop the spam, so it's not worth it.