Posted on 11/22/2006 7:55:58 AM PST by Nachum
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court sentenced the founder of the country's largest pornography Web site to life imprisonment on Wednesday and jailed another eight of the site's organizers, state media reported.
The Taiyuan Intermediate People's Court handed down the sentence to Chen Hui, 28, and ordered the confiscation of 100,000 yuan ($12,500), Xinhua news agency said. The other eight were jailed for terms ranging from 13 months to 10 years.
Chen founded "Pornographic Summer" in 2004 and went on to start three more pornography Web sites, making money by charging registration fees of $25 to $33 to some of the 600,000 members they attracted.
The report cited police as saying it was difficult to know how much money Chen made from the sites, since most of it was spent or squirreled away in foreign bank accounts.
Chen evaded closure by regularly changing the domain name and server, the report said.
Pornography was among the vices nearly wiped out in China under the strict and puritanical rule of Mao Zedong. But since economic reforms began and social controls have loosened, it has become more readily available.
China also has an army of cyber police who patrol the Internet for unfavorable content, but their targets are more often politically sensitive subjects than pornography.
China must be softening up. Not that long ago they would have taken him out and shot him.
on porn? nudge, nudge
Careful. If capitalism gets too closely associated with pornocracy, decent people will want nothing to do with it whether they are in the US or China.
Though the sentence seems harsh, better a pornographer than a political prisoner.
This should get the attention of porno-king wannabes.
China didn't like the competition, they want all that dirty money for themselves
I can read their headlines tomorrow. Customers of Porn websites imprisoned for 30 years.
Using an average of 29 dollars x 600,000 is one big piece of change. Wonder who gets it???
The saddest thing about this is that I suspect there are quite a few freepers who would approve of this sort of porn crackdown in the United States.
What's wrong with porn?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.