It does not. Further down the page, they link to a document [1] that states that they would be required to report NSRs and law enforcement requests (combined) in ranges of 1,000, if they wanted to include the NSRs.
iCloud's free* now, actually. It became a free service when they transitioned away from the MobileMe branding.
* You need a Mac or iOS device to join, though. And you can pay for additional storage if you want ($20, $40, or $100 per year), but that's not necessary.
FWIW, they were charging $3/package for their initial launch at UWaterloo, and people were actually paying for it. You're right - probably not enough people for it to be feasible, but yeah, even some of us ('poor' students) were paying for it.
Most likely not. Apple generally does not redirect people to their locale-specific version of their site. I'm in Canada, and I can visit apple.com without being redirected to apple.ca, for instance.
My understanding is that yes, identica and app.net are similar, except for their business models. Identica didn't have a clear business model (AFAIK), so they would likely resort to advertising. App.net is trying to avoid that by charging users directly.