China sentences man to 13 years in prison for running Web site showing pornographic videos

China jails man 13 years for running porn Web site

BEIJING — A man in southern China was sentenced to 13 years in jail for running a pornographic Web site, a state news agency reported Sunday, amid a national crackdown on lewd online content.

The court in the Guangdong province city of Jiangmen handed down the sentence to Huang Yizhong and fined him 100,000 yuan ($14,600), the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Huang pleaded guilty to charges of copying and spreading pornographic material on the Web site, which he ran since 2005 using a rented U.S. server, Xinhua said. Police caught him last July and his trial started Jan. 6.

It said Huang downloaded more than 1,000 pornographic movies and edited them into video clips for his site. With more than 4,000 paying members, he received profits of nearly $500,000, Xinhua said.

Last year, Chinese authorities caught nearly 5,400 people suspected of involvement in online pornography and vowed to strengthen Internet policing.

Beijing’s pervasive policing of the Internet is already among the world’s most stringent. Authorities have said the “purification of the Internet” and fighting of online crime are closely tied to the country’s stability.

The Communist government says the main targets of its Web censorship are pornography, gambling and other sites deemed harmful to society. Critics, however, say those goals often act as a cover for detecting and blocking sensitive political content. China’s restrictions of the Internet are often referred to as the “Great Firewall of China.”