Maryland Anti-Spam Legislation Held Unconstitutional

If you thought that the recent enactment of anti-spam laws would curtail the proliferation of junk e-mail, think again. Unsolicited commercial e-mail, or "spam," continues unabated, despite these protections. Spammers continue to stay one step ahead of the technology designed to prevent it. And at least one court recently held that a state law regulating spam is unconstitutional.

Spam presents a serious problem for many reasons. Spam can be fraudulent, offensive, and impose a significant burden on e-mail users and computer providers. Spam interrupts e-mail users, and causes them to waste time and energy reviewing and deleting messages. Internet service providers lose employee time, bandwidth, and disk space in their efforts to prevent spam from reaching end users and to store and delete spam that filters through the system.