Four executives from Shenzhen Qvod Technology who are facing porn charges would likely be penalized with up to 10 years prison term, indicates a comment made by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) on Sunday.
The rare comment, issued two days after the Jan 7-8 trial of the four at the Haidian District People's Court in Beijing, was made amid debates among Chinese netizens that the looming jail term appears to be too harsh, reports Chinadaily. The discussions led the regulator to point out that owners of websites in China a legally liable for what they publish.
Their legal liability "is a basic principle to develop and govern the Internet," points out the CAC. The watchdog adds, "Governing cyberspace by rule of law has become a consensus in the industry, and it requires everyone to abide by it."
The four deny the charges of knowingly allowing users of Qvod, now defunct, to upload and download adult movies. The prosecution says more than 70 percent of files it got from three servers of Qvod were pornographic materials, reports CCTV.
Wang Xin, general manager of the website, explains, "The function of Qvod players and its servers are just encoding and numbering. Qvod didn't release any videos to the viewers. The process of releasing and making people see in realised by the administrator of third-party websites."
Despite the tight control on China of its internet, 65 percent of over 1 million complaints in 2015 about online activities were related to porn, according to data from the CAC's Internet Information Reporting Center.