When spam first became a widespread phenomenon, back, oh, between 15 and 20 years ago, part of the problem in using existing laws to go after spam – or, indeed, in creating new laws specifically addressing spam – was that nobody could really agree on what is spam. What is the definition of spam? It was sort of like that classic line from Justice Potter Stewart – everyone would know it when they saw it, but nobody could quite agree on what “it” was. That all changed when Paul Vixie, founder of Mail Abuse Prevention System (“MAPS” – which is ‘spam’ spelled backwards) and I sat down and hammered out the definitive definition of spam.