Wednesday, Mar 28, 2007    Text size: 

Under the antiporn policy, users who send porn on their mobile devices will face up to two weeks in prison or a $400 fine. Merchants who distribute mobile porn will face a stiffer penalty of up the three years in jail, according to a Xinhua New Agency report.

The announcement of the new policy comes on the heels of recent arrests for cellphone porn in which authorities netted 19 mobile dealers. Few details of the arrests were given, but police said the mobile dealers arrested were selling cellphones with pornographic material loaded onto the devices’ memory chips. The memory chips were capable of holding up to 60 minutes of video content.

China, which has nearly 500 million mobile users, criminalizes those who possess and deal in sexually explicit material. Although adult content is widely available, authorities have been known to dish out multiyear prison sentences for merchants accused of selling porn.