Law / United States / 
Maryland
Maryland Unauthorized Access to Computers, with a civil private right of action
Md. Code Ann., Crim. Law § 7-302
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What follows is LexLint's own research summary of this law, not legal advice.
In force.
A computer misuse rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 29 August 2026.
What it requires
- Do not access, or exceed authorized access to, a Maryland-connected computer network, system, or database intentionally and without authorization; the statute defines only access, never authorization, so whether an unrestricted public page counts as authorized is unsettled rather than resolved by its text.
- A violation exposes you to a civil suit by anyone who suffers a specific and direct injury, with actual damages and attorney's fees recoverable, independent of and in addition to any criminal exposure and independent of MODPA's own enforcement scheme.
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Section 7-302(c)(1) provides that a person may not intentionally, willfully, and without authorization access, attempt to access, cause to be accessed, or exceed the person's authorized access to all or part of a computer network, computer control language, computer, computer software, computer system, computer service, or computer database, or copy, attempt to copy, possess, or attempt to possess the contents of a computer database accessed in violation of that clause.
Reading the section end to end, only access is defined (to instruct, communicate with, store data in, retrieve or intercept data from, or otherwise use the resources of a computer program, system, or network); authorization and without authorization are never defined anywhere in the section, and it carries no publicly-available-data exception and no notice-based revocation clause of any kind, so there is no textual hook either way for how a Maryland court would treat a public, unauthenticated page.
Section 7-302(g) separately creates a civil private right of action: a person who has suffered a specific and direct injury because of a violation of this section may bring a civil action, recover actual damages and reasonable attorney's fees and court costs, and a prior criminal conviction is not a prerequisite to suit.
This civil right of action is independent of MODPA's own Attorney-General-only enforcement scheme and expands a scraper's exposure in Maryland beyond the criminal penalties in subsection (d).
When LexLint raises it
crawls_web
Read the law
official text, Maryland General Assembly (mgaleg.maryland.gov)
Every line above is drawn from the primary source linked here, read on the date shown. This is a research summary, not legal advice.