China tries 11 in online pornography case
Eleven people accused of running China’s biggest pornographic website went on trial today in the midst of a nationwide crackdown on online pornography, a news report said.
The website was set up in 2003 to sell photographs, articles and films, and had more than 100,000 registered users, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The site was run from the eastern province of Anhui but based on a server in the US, Xinhua said.
It received more than 35 million hits before it was shut down by police in November.
The report didn’t say what penalty the defendants might face if convicted.
But the operator of another website was sentenced to 15 years in prison in November on charges of peddling pornography.
China encourages internet use for business and education and has 87 million people online.
But communist leaders also try to control what the Chinese public sees, blocking access to material deemed subversive or pornographic.
The government says thousands of people have been detained and hundreds of sites shut down since the anti-porn crackdown was launched last year.
