Smells fishy indeed by it's just $8 per 10 years...

Also I'm sure that if a bill were ever passed to stop junk mail by default, it would be utilizing the infrastructure built by this service

It indeed has a fishy smell to it. But as I thought through it, if it were free then some bozo would spam an entire address database and then we can't have nice things anymore. The ten year expiration is sketchy, but I guess someone is hoping you'll let it expire (I've never received a "renewal notice", as it were.) And, yeah, "nice mailbox, shame if it got filled with shit you didn't ask for."

OTOH, for less than a dollar a year, I can go find other clouds to shake my fist at.