Unsolicited commercial email ("cold emails") are spam; specifically, legal rules -- both state and federal (e.g., CAN-SPAM and its implementing regulations) -- designed to fight spam target unsolicited commercial email generally.<p>The definition you post reflects the original, Usenet-era, definition of "spam" when the term was being applied to newsgroup posts (not always commercial) that depressed the signal-to-noise ratio on newsgroups. However, once email harvesting, often combined with superficial personalization, began being used to send cold commercial emails, the term was applied to unsolicited commercial email generally -- and this was a bigger concern for the internet community (and the public at large) than the old kind of "spam" ever was, resulting in various legal efforts to control it.