Different studies are showing contradictory trends in the amount of spam received by email users, the latest being Postini's finding that spam represents between 75 and 80 percent of all mail. The New York Times today published a story that unintentionally pointed to why these different conclusions may being drawn by different firms: last year's Can-Spam Act legislation put the fear of government into the hearts of some spammers, yet defined the unwanted commercial email in such a way that many harmless newsletters could be defined as spam. Several overlaying trends started at the beginning of 2004, the time Can-Spam came into effect. Legitimate commercial marketers were temporarily scared out of the market. Some illegitimate firms - many touting online pharmacies, gambling parlors and the like - also laid low. On the other hand, editorial emails, like The New York Times's own email blasts have been characterized as "spam" by some of the anti-spam outfits because the company, probably correctly, feels its editorial products don't need to conform to commercial email requirements, like the inclusion of a physical address. The very act of defining spam in the Can-Spam legislation had the perverse effect of making the problem seem a great deal worse than it already was. Now, depending on how you count spam, you can point to a rise, or you can point to a proportional fall.