China: 11 Years In Jail For Illegal Download

[FreeUS]

Quote:

The Chinese government has sentenced a former policeman to jail for eleven years for downloading ``anti-revolutionary'' materials from the Internet, a human rights group in Hong Kong said on Monday.

Li Dawei, 40, was the first person found guilty of subversion for downloading and printing material Beijing deemed to be anti-revoluntionary, the Information Center for Human Rights & Democracy said in a statement

There were an estimated 45.8 million Internet users in China at the end of June, according to government figures.

A former policeman in teh suburbs of Lanzhou in Gansu province, Li was arrested last year and sent to jail two months ago.

The Web sites that Li had visited included www.89-64.com, a spokesman of the human rights group told Reuters. The Web site said on its homepage it was now for sale.

China last month announced new rules that threaten to fine or close down online publishers if they disobey an existing broad ban on content deemed politically unacceptable.

Since a fire at an unlicensed Internet cafe killed 25 people in June, China has closed or temporarily banned as many as 14,000 such businesses for failing to obey safety regulations.

Internet cafes are a common way for Chinese to get on the information superhighway, as few have personal computers at home.