On Wednesday the person behind China's largest pornographic website was sentenced to life imprisonment.

 

Judges at the Taiyuan Intermediate People's Court handed down the sentence to Chen Hui and ordered the confiscation of 100,000 yuan (US$12,500). Another eight people involved in the website were jailed for terms ranging from 13 months to ten years.

 

All nine were convicted of profiting from pornographic dissemination. Apart from one who's over 50 the average age of the other eight criminals is 23. Chen, 28, and his accomplices started the Qingseliuyuetian (pornographic summer) website in 2004 and opened a further three porn websites. They attracted more than 600,000 users.

 

A police source said it was difficult to estimate the exact profits involved in the website as most of the money had been spent or saved in foreign bank accounts. The police found about 200,000 yuan (US$25,000) in the Chinese bank accounts of the nine.

 

A member of the public complained to city police on June 21 last year that a hospital website had been changed and become the homepage for pornographic material.

 

Police questioned the administrator of the website, Wang Jianfei, who allegedly admitted he was responsible for the "Qingseliuyuetian" Taiyuan section. Three months later police in the provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Jilin, Liaoning, Anhui and Hubei arrested Chen and others involved.  

 

All the servers of "China's largest adult community" were based overseas and Chen regularly changed the website's domain name, the servers and Internet provider address, police said.

 

At first the four websites accepted about 200,000 registered members free of charge but demanded 199 to 266 yuan (US$25-33) in registration fees from people who joined later. Some paid more for life membership. According to police a "top-level VIP membership" sold at 3,999 yuan (US$500). Commercial space on the website sold for 1,000 to 3,000 yuan (US$125 to 375) per month.

 

On October 3 last year when the website was closed down the registered members exceeded 600,000 in China. The website contained more than nine million pornographic images and articles and it had received more than 11 million hits.

 

(Xinhua News Agency November 23, 2006)