NTT DoCoMo announced o­n the 30th that they have recovered 42,600,000 yen from a total of 8 spammers of their "iMode" service.
This amount comes from NTT DoCoMo billing the spammers based o­n the 1 or 2 yen cost of each mail sent, but it's pretty creative how it was decided the spammers had to pay - the figure is based o­n mail that was undeliverable, so NTT was unable to collect the correct amount from any of its users. The result? Bill the people that sent the mail.

NTT DoCoMo has announced o­n the 30th that they will successfully recover a total of 42,600,000 yen from 8 spammers who used the "iMode" service. This figure is a total of the usage fees for all of the mails that the spammers sent that was nondeliverable, as NTT has been unable to collect from any of its users.

This is clearly aimed at putting a brake to spam. This marks the first time that damages have been collected from merchants without circumventing legal methods.

Beginning in December of 2002, and continuing until March of last year, the 8 users signed up for DoCoMo's "special connection service" which uses a special connection that makes  the trasmission of email easier, and sent more than 47,000,000 emails.

Druing March of last year, the Tokyo District Court ordered the spammers to pay around 6,500,000 yen to DoCoMo. The judgement revolved around the fact that while DoCoMo would normally be able to collect fees from the recipient of the email, since the mail was "undeliverable," NTT would be able to collect the 1 or 2 yen for each mail sent from the spammers.

Carrying through with this, DoCoMo sought around 15,000,000 - 1,400,000 yen from the 8 spammers according to the amount of mail they sent. Those who would not agree to this went into legal proceedings, and have begun payment.

Inspired by:
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/business/news/20040501it01.htm