China sentences Web porn king to life in prison

[Ian David]

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.

More:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=internetNews&storyid=2006-11-22T151318Z_01_PEK147738_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-PORNOGRAPHY.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

[valerief]

1. I wonder if China has "I know it when I see it" porn or if they have

defined porn.

I guess if the web porn king shared more of his profits with the gummint, he'd be a hero instead of a convict.

[Crankie Avalon]

2. Pretty amazing someone would get a life sentence for something like this...

...I mean, they were just vanilla sex sites, weren't they? If it was kiddie porn or something equally sick/extreme, they would have made a point of mentioning it in the article, I would think.

[ShrewdLiberal]

3. Nope. Just read that article again. You're right.

They have very strict laws in China.