Why do people go one the offensive whenever bulk email is brought up on a programming board or mailing list?

Why assume the worst?

Its a pretty illogical and ill conceived notion that someone who wants to write a custom script to handle some form of bulkmailing wants to spam people.

If i wanted to spam, I would either pay $50 for one of those commercial spam apps and not worry about coding anything, or I would buy my list of email addresses from a place that throws in a free spam app.

To think that someone wants to spam just because they Bulk Mail is fucking ridiculous. There are hundreds more 'valid' 'ethical' etc reasons to Bulk Mail than there are to blind spamming. Spamming is ridiculously easy, and costs pennies to set up 'out of the box' in comparison to writing a custom app to bulk requested information to subscribers.

Get off your damn high horses. Take your 'anti-spamming' sentiments out on people who are actually spamming, not on those who are legitimately working with opt-in lists.