• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 11, 2010

A Maine legislative committee voted Thursday to repeal a controversial 2009 online marketing law, which was widely seen as unconstitutional, that restricts the data that can be collected from minors in the state.

The bill's sponsor, state senator Elizabeth Schneider, also withdrew a proposal for a narrower measure that would have only banned companies from collecting data about minors for the purpose of marketing prescription drugs to them. Schneider said Thursday that even the more limited measure raised constitutional issues that could put the state at risk of litigation, according to a legislative analyst.

NetChoice -- a coalition of Web companies including AOL, eBay, News Corp. and Yahoo -- cheered Schneider's decision to withdraw her proposal for a new online marketing law. "She understood that the legislation could cause grief for the state -- legally and financially," said NetChoice's policy counsel Braden Cox.

The full Maine legislature is expected to vote on the repeal within a few weeks.

The original 2009 law, "An Act To Prevent Predatory Marketing Practices Against Minors," prohibits companies from knowingly collecting personal information or health-related information from minors under 18 without their parents' consent. The measure also bans companies from selling or transferring health information about minors that identifies them, regardless of how the data was collected.

U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock last year said the act likely was unconstitutional after media organizations and NetChoice challenged it. But Woodcock also dismissed that lawsuit because the state's attorney general, Janet Mills, said she wasn't going to enforce the law.

NetChoice and other challengers argued that the measure violated the First Amendment and also restricted interstate commerce. They warned that the statute could prohibit newspapers from publishing information about minors and also could end up prohibiting teens from receiving information. They also argued that the measure could prevent youngsters from even registering for social networking services.

The narrower measure proposed by Schneider earlier this year also proved controversial. The digital rights group Center for Democracy & Technology expressed concerns that even the more limited version of the law could have affected Web companies. "Many websites, email services, and social networking platforms are supported by advertising and collect information from their users," CDT general counsel John Morris wrote in a letter to Schneider that was submitted before she withdrew the proposal on Thursday. He added that the proposal "would likely chill substantial amounts of speech for these sites and services."