The unique spam woes in Japan are quite distinct from the US. A high ratio of Japanese users access the internet via mobile phones; spam burdens individual users' time, costs them data tranmission fees, and taxes Japanese cellular networks.
A large volume of complaints to cellular providers resulted in relatively early spam legislation targeting messages to mobile phones. Today, effective Japanese spam regulation is largely through private technological advances, though with some legal help in key areas.
The Japanese have had a high high ratio of cellular phone Internet access for years. In 2001, the largest Japanese provider, DoCoMo, recieved permission to restrict its network. Early restrictions allowed blocking messages from unspecified addresses, limiting the ability to send to invalid DoCoMo addresses, and changing e-mail addresses. By summer 2002, problems had only escalated; estimates claimed 85% of the 950 million emails a day on the cellular network were randomly generated, at a cost of $200 million a year to DoCoMo. Under great pressure from telecommunications and the public, Japan instituted a legal solution in July 2002. Messages must specify they are an ad sent without permission, have a valid address, and have an opt-out option. Dictionary spamming was banned to mitigate network burden for processing messages to invalid address. Japan also expanded its old pyramid scheme exploitation laws to apply to spam. Perhaps the most unique provision was that the law called for telecommunications providers to implement their own, private solutions to the problem. Early observations, like this one praising the efforts as "lasting" in an American law journal, were optimistic, especially given the novelty of the problem and the specialization of the solution.
Spam patterns don’t seem to have changed much. In 2003, the same approximate volume of Japanese email was estimated at about 80% random (compared to 85% before). The difference, DoCoMo says, is that now most spam is filtered before users even get it. Providers are able to use the legal requirement of flagging spam as ads to help block them efficiently. Another large victory for providers was a court decision in March 2003 awarding damages of 6.57 million yen (about $54,000) for repeated messages to invalid addresses using the new spam laws. DoCoMo estimated a cost of 4 million yen for routing spam to addresses that didn’t exist. Still, critics have said the laws have had no effect on spam in Japan.
This view is supporting by increasing technical barriers to spam. In November 2003, DoCoMo announced it would allow users to block not only ISPs but entire cellular domains. In October, DoCoMo restricted network users to 1000 emails a day. If there is any deterrent effect from the new laws in Japan, it is outweighed by the technical barriers to spammers implemented by private companies. This approach is more effective at blocking foreign spam or compliant but still unwanted spam with the legally required opt-out, but it shifts the cost of spam to the spammees. The law seems to only mitigate that cost with a labelling system and occasional awards for costs after a legal battle. In some sense, these laws' key function is not their enforcement or deterrent effect but their help to providers trying to filter out spam. Perhaps an opt-in requirement or more heavy enforcement could help actually decrease the volume of spam or at least shift some of its cost to spammers.
The Japenese laws are still critical in a broader context. They show an effort to stop spam, a good start at least. Domestic anti-spam laws worldwide are critical to any kind of international spam agreement or initiative. With anti-spam laws in place, Japan can bargain for other countries to adopt similar measures and Japan will not be a safe haven for spammers as increasing regulation carves out spam-friendly zones.
For other countries, see the Spam Laws Worldwide Index.