On Tuesday 25 March 2003 05:50, gary wrote:
Hi Anders, rather then belabor the point, suffice to say, yes, a single mail can be spam... If a spammer just sends one spam to any list, say this list... which is composed of what, 4000 members at any given time... or any list, some have 1000s of people on them, and that one spam is seen/sent to 1000s of people on that list, according to your definition of spam, that is not spam, yet 1000s of people have seen it. Anyone sending spam to a list is mass mailing.
<dict spam> 4. To bombard a newsgroup with multiple copies of a message. This is more specifically called `EMP', Excessive Multi-Posting. 5. To mass-mail unrequested identical or nearly-identical email messages, particularly those containing advertising. Especially used when the mail addresses have been culled from network traffic or databases without the consent of the recipients. Synonyms include {UCE}, {UBE}. </dict> Your definition of spam comes dangerously close to including every single mail on a mailing list. I would say (possibly multiple) unwarranted advertising by an unidentified (unidentifiable) person, not a single mail by a list regular. I say "possibly multiple", because I wouldn't call a single mail from, say, The Kompany announcing a new product spam. Multiple such mails would fall in that category.