Tech Shout!

China’s Web Porn King has been awarded a life imprisonment. The decision was announced by the Chinese Taiyuan Intermediate People’s Court who along with the porn king has also jailed eight of the site’s organizers, state media reported.

The court handed down the sentence to Chen Hui, 28, and ordered the confiscation of 100,000 Yuan ($12,500). The other eight were jailed for terms ranging from 13 months to 10 years.

Chen is the founder of China’s largest pornography website. He founded ‘Pornographic Summer’ in 2004 and went on to start three more pornography websites, making money by charging registration fees of $25 to $33 to some of the 600,000 members they attracted.

When the site was closed in October 2005, it contained more than 9 million pornographic images and articles, police said.

The police stated that it was difficult to determine as to how much money Chen made from the sites, since most of it was spent or squirreled away in foreign bank accounts.

Chen escaped closure by regularly changing the domain name and server, the report said.

Pornography was among the vices nearly wiped out in China under the strict and puritanical rule of Mao Zedong. But since economic reforms began and social controls have loosened, it has become more readily available.

China also has an army of cyber police who patrol the web for unfavorable content, but their targets are more often politically sensitive subjects than pornography.