A Montgomery County judge has ruled that Maryland's anti-spam law - one of the first attempts to control junk e-mail advertising - is unconstitutional because it seeks to regulate commerce outside the state's borders. The ruling by Circuit Judge Duke G. Thompson effectively overturns Maryland's 2002 Commercial Electronic Mail Act, which was the first state law passed to penalize people who sent spam. Thompson tossed out the case brought against a New York e-mail marketer by Eric Menhart, a George Washington University Law School student. "If this decision is upheld, it will serve as a road map for future defendants ... to argue that they cannot be held liable," David H. Kramer, a California attorney who specializes in Internet law, told The (Baltimore) Sun.
Congress and several state legislatures have passed laws to corral spam, the popular term for junk e-mail advertising. Critics complain that it chokes computer inboxes with solicitations for everything from male impotence drugs to weight counseling. Businesses lose millions of dollars trying to filter it, and individuals waste time managing it. |