It's not just paid email addresses. It's paid anything. My father constantly pesters me to tell him where he can get free movies, music, software and so on. He wanted to know where he could make unlimited online backups for free and I told him that stuff costs money. Somehow people have gotten it in their heads that if it's on the internet it's free and they shouldn't have to pay for anything.
The VC funding model of investing for growth has helped to create this perception. The sad consequence is that this has made it difficult to run companies that don’t scale to sizes that interest VC investments.
After I started my job and the prices came down with the help of online music sales and streaming, I bought a lot of CDs and digitally distributed music. Most of them were albums that I already have, because I wanted to support the artists which brought that feelings into my life.
Same is also valid for software, movies, or anything. If I can justify price of a software, I buy it. Otherwise, I use something FOSS instead.