A trial involving China's largest pornographic website, which
boasted more than 600,000 registered members, began on
Wednesday.
Nine creators and organizers of the website, Qingseliuyuetian,
meaning "pornographic summer", are being sued at the Taiyuan
Intermediate People's Court, in north China's Shanxi Province.
Apart from one culprit aged over 50, the average age of the
other eight suspects stands at 23.
A member of the public complained to city police on June 21 last
year that a hospital website had changed to become the homepage of
a porn website. This kick-started a police search which culminated
in the discovery and arrest of website administrator, Wang Jianfei,
who admitted under interrogation that he was in charge of
Qingseliuyuetian's Taiyuan section.
Three months later, police in Fujian, Guangdong, Jilin, Liaoning, Anhui and
Hubei provinces arrested Chen Hui, creator of the website, and
other organizers.
Chen is alleged to have confessed that the site opened in May
2004 and claimed to be "the largest Chinese adult community".
All the website's servers were based overseas, enabling it to
avoid detection, and Chen regularly changed the website's domain
name, servers and IP address, the police said.
Chen and his partners are accused of renting ten servers in the
United States?last July and opening another three porn
websites.
At first the four websites accepted about 200,000 registered
members free of charge, but demanded 199 to 266 yuan (US$25 to 33)
in registration fees from later applicants.
Some people paid more for a life membership of the website.
According to the police, a "top-level VIP membership" was sold at
3,999 yuan (US$500). At the same time, commercial space on the
website sold for 1,000 to 3,000 yuan (US$125 to 375) per month.
On Oct. 3 last year, when the website was closed down,
registered members exceeded 600,000 around China. The online
repository contained nine million pornographic images and articles
and had received more than 11 million hits.
The police said it was difficult to ascertain the website's
precise illegal profits since most of the money was spent or saved
in Chen's and his partners' foreign bank accounts.
The police only found around 200,000 yuan (US$25,000) in the
men's Chinese accounts.
(Xinhua News Agency September 1, 2006)