China jails website founder in online porn crackdown

The founder of a porn website with more than 100,000 registered users has been sentenced to ten years and six months in prison as China steps up a crackdown on online pornography.

Jiang Nianbing allegedly gained 88,500 yuan (14,300 U.S. dollars) from the paid website, which he set up in March 2013. He had more than 6,000 porn videos on the site before his arrest in October that year, the National Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications Office said Thursday in a statement.

Jiang was seized in Kaixian County, southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, where he maintained the site. In addition to prison time, the county court also imposed a fine of 20,000 yuan in April.

The case was among five the office publicized to showcase the result of their crackdown and warn potential perpetrators.

Another case that is still under investigation saw one suspect seized in August in east China's Fujian Province for allegedly selling porn videos online.

Citing the police investigation, the suspect, surnamed Chen, had allegedly sold more than 2 million porn videos and around 130 million films and TV episodes without copyright authorization via the Internet since 2010. The amount of money involved was described as "huge."

Wrongdoers in the rest of the three cases, all of which were wrapped up this year, got sentences ranging from four months to seven years as well as fines for similar offenses including making or selling porn videos via the Internet or social networking applications.