Damn, they don't fuck around in China.
Chinese Computer Science Major Sentenced for Internet Porn
BEIJING (AFP) - A Chinese university student in eastern Zhejiang province was sentenced to a year in jail for selling pornography on the Internet.
The 22 year-old student, identified only by his surname Xie, was sentenced by a court in the provincial capital of Hangzhou on Tuesday for operating a pornographic Internet service, according to the Xinhua news agency.
The sentencing comes under a new government effort to crackdown on Internet porn and "purify" China's social environment, it said Wednesday.
Police investigations found that the third year computer science major at Zhejiang University of Technology had earned more than 160,000 yuan (9,200 dollars) since he launched his website in March 2003.
More than 1,500 people, who paid membership fees, registered on the website, the investigation showed.
All of Xie's income was confiscated and he was fined 20,000 yuan, it added.
Another man, Dong Haibin, was also sentenced to five years imprisonment earlier in Zhejiang's Ningbo city for starting an online porn service last year when he was a college student, it added.
China's legislature rubber stamped a regulation earlier this month that allows courts to sentence violators to up to life imprisonment for spreading pornography on the Internet.
The rulings were handed down as the state stepped up a wide ranging crackdown on the Internet that are also aimed at controlling anti-communist and unpatriotic political web postings.
In recent weeks, China has shut down several popular websites and chatrooms that have been known for their heavy criticism of Communist Party policies and government corruption.
The state arrested at least 224 people in the first 10 days of the ongoing war against Internet pornography that began on July 16 and shut down nearly 700 websites, press reports said.
Recent surfing on China's Internet revealed relative ease in accessing overseas pornographic websites, despite the governments "Great Firewall of China" that has been largely set up to block such access.
However, searches for pornography on domestic websites routinely led to sites that appeared to be approved by the government which were largely related to sex education.