HANOI—The trial of four former students accused of running the largest and best-known adult website in Vietnam is set to begin this week. The four defendants, whose ages range from 26 to 57, are among 12 people arrested last year by the authorities, charged with disseminating debauched cultural products.
The website, www.moczi.com, which was shut down in November of 2008, was launched in 2006 and reportedly attained an Alexa rank of 84 among the 100 most-visited websites in Vietnam.
According to monstersandcritics.com, the site originally billed itself as “a forum to educate young people on how to have a healthy sex life. It allegedly evolved into a pornographic site and was also used to exchange information about prostitutes.”
After it was shut down, 20 people from across the country were arrested, but authorities decided to prosecute only 12 of them. The four whose trial starts this week were reportedly members of the site’s management team. The remaining eight will be tried at a later date.
