Shanghai has sentenced 11 people to jail terms of up to five years for selling pornography over the internet, in the city's first test of new national laws aimed at cracking down on smut.
Three district courts on Thursday handed down sentences of three months to five years, as well as fines ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 yuan, state media said yesterday.
The Supreme People's Court in Beijing said this month that pornography merchants could be punished with life imprisonment, depending on the seriousness of the crimes.
The mainland began cracking down on pornography last month as part of a political campaign focused on youth morality.
In the most serious of Shanghai's 11 cases, a court sentenced Zhang Bing to five years in jail and fined him 50,000 yuan for setting up his own website, which allowed users to download 245 blue films. Customers paid a registration fee of 5,000 yuan and additional fees for each download.