Eleven people have been jailed for running the adult site 99 Sex Forum in what the government is calling the largest Internet porn case in the country’s history.
The sentences, some ranging up to 12 years, were handed down Friday by the Hefei intermediate court in the central province of Anhui.
99 Sex Forum, also referred to as the Jiujiu Porn Forum, hosted adult photos, videos, stories, chat rooms, and information on prostitution throughout the country and is the largest triumph thus far in the country’s crackdown on Internet porn, which was launched in July 2004.
Site operators Wang Yong and Shao Rong, along with their employees, were arrested in May and accused of using offshore computer servers to perpetrate crimes, operating in more than a dozen provinces and cities and registering more than 300,000users and logging more than 400 million cumulative visits on their website.
In November 2004 99 Sex Forum had approximately 76,000 registered users and had earned some 220,000 yuan ($26,000), according to a report by the People’s Court Daily.
The Chinese law targeting adult sites was implemented amid growing concerns about the negative influence of the Internet on youth and prohibits the dissemination of explicit or hardcore materials over the Web.
