Hangzhou police seized 8 pornographic comics platforms and seized 3TB of pornographic comics data

On November 5, the official Weibo account of the campaign against pornography and illegal publications announced a number of typical "protecting young people" cases investigated and dealt with in Beijing, Zhejiang, Inner Mongolia and other places. Among them, the seizure of eight pornographic comics platforms in Hangzhou attracted attention.

"Protecting young people" means cracking down on the production, sale and dissemination of illegal publications and information containing obscene, pornographic, violent, terrorist and cruel content, so as to minimize the harm of harmful online information to children.

It was officially disclosed that in the "Net Clean 2019" special operation, the public security organs of Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province carried out targeted work and discovered through Internet patrols that eight pornographic comics online platforms, including Ziman, Kenmanxingzu, Touyue Public Account, and Shengling Forum, were suspected of spreading obscene materials.

The police immediately launched an investigation and collected evidence on the clues, quickly found out the organizational structure and capital flow of the pornographic comics network platform, and obtained key evidence. In mid-August 2019, a special task force composed of the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau Internet Police Branch, the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau Xihu District Branch, the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau Xiacheng District Branch, and the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau Xiaoshan District Branch dispatched police forces to carry out unified arrests in Hangzhou and seven provinces across the country, taking criminal compulsory measures against a total of 19 suspects and seizing nearly 3T of pornographic comics data involved in the case.

Upon investigation, it was found that criminal gangs of pornographic comics online platforms such as Ziman set up websites on overseas servers and obtained obscene pornographic comics from overseas comics websites. They then promoted the comics by inserting pop-up ads on various online platforms such as novels, movies, and games, in order to make profits by inducing netizens to recharge and pay for reading.

The eight pornographic comics online platforms have nearly one million registered members, 70% of whom are minors under the age of 18, and the funds involved exceed 20 million yuan. Among the arrested suspects, the majority were born in the 1990s, some of whom worked in Internet companies and operated pornographic comics platforms part-time after get off work. The case is currently under further investigation.