When you get right down to it, micropayments have actually been around for quite a while. We just have to look hard to see them. I'm looking out my window right now, and I see one person who is payed by micropayments: my mail carrier. While she yaks on the phone, (non stop... seriously, how much does she have to say?!) she's also using micropayments: her phone company charges per minute, or at least they do when she's gone over her allotted time. Even gumball machines could be seen as micropayments.
Really, what is new here on the Internet is the idea of micropaymenting a piece of media. Comics, magazines, movies, and books just cost too much when compared to the amount of competition out there. When I buy bananas, there's a rediculously low price for them, because each banana cost some miniscule fraction of a penny to create en mass. well, DVD's aren't exactly expensive to produce either. Materials per disc and case can't amount to even a penny. The actual creeation of the movie behind the DVD is what we're paying for there, not the physical product. But it is often teh physical product which drives the purchase, despite the inadequecies of the product inside.
I can tell if I am buying a bad banana. I can squeeze it and feel if it's got any squishy areas inside. But you can't thump a video. You can't tell if you're going to like what's inside, just as you can't tell if you'll like the taste of the banana. When the bananas gone, I'm full. When the movies gone, it's 2 hours later. So if I didn't like the banana, I can buy another fruit, or try another brand of banana. generally there won't be much variance from banana to banana. Movies are unquantifiable. Reviews are subjective", and taste is relative.
Anyway, micropayments aren't new. We micropay for stamps. We micropay for long distance minutes. The only thing new here is that the leeches at the top are going to be flushed out when there's not enough money coming in to pay ther multi-million dollar sallaries. Maybe the rest of that money can be spent on healthcare for employees.