What is Spam?
Unsolicited marketing.

Framing and Linguistics:
I have been reading a few political books recently and seen a few clips which have done a good job of introducing me to the concept of framing.

Basically you can take any problem or idea and push a manipulative idea based on the language you use. For example, we can have "common sense" (ie: no experts needed) forest policy which is more honestly aligned with the concept of "leave no tree behind."

Search Engine Spam:
Spam is unsolicited marketing.

When people get bad search results they are making a request...the results are not unsolicited.

When the results are wonderful and search engines sell a ton of ads that is great. When the results suck that problem is not mine or yours, it is the search engines problem.

Broken Algorithms
Search engine spam should be reframed as "broken algorithms."

Often SEOs fight over defining what search engine spam is and sometimes even a random moral or ethical guideline is pulled into the arguement.

Search engine spam is not the problem of the SEO. If we want to reframe the issue to put the blame where it belongs that is cool, but there is no reason for us to waste time and effort fighting over trying to arbitrarily define "what search engine spam is."

Thanks to Brett Tabke, Mikkel, Peter D, NFFC, Nick W, rcjordan, Brian, and the other cast and crew of SEW forums.