The canonical definition of spam (in the context of email) was
settled on a very long time ago ("unsolicited bulk email") [...]
Frankly, I don't like that definition. Specifically it misses an
important class of spam - well targeted, individualised, unsolicited
marketing messages which are necessarily unique (and hence not bulk).
The "bulk" in UBE is the same one in the Briedbart Index for Usenet:
they have to be substantively identical. Form-letter "personalization"
of the "Dear %s, [invariant text]" kind does not make them non-bulk.
Neither do hashbusters or randomized spelling errors.
However, if they are individualized in the sense that they don't use
invariant text, each one being written for the particular recipient,
then they're not spam, even if they are unsolicited and/or unwanted:
they may be problematic, but at worst they are abuse _on_ the net, not
abuse _of_ the net - that is to say, that problem, even if it _is_ a
problem, scales just fine.
Just don't think "spam" needs to include all problematic email (or
something equivalent, such as "if it's not spam it must be OK").
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