Social harm will be taken into consideration when sentencing those who spread pornography or sell pornographic products through a cloud drive in China, the country's top procuratorate and top court said Wednesday.
Considering the power of a cloud drive, those who produce, replicate, sell or spread pornography through it will not only be punished for the amount involved, but also for the social harm it causes, according to a reply released on the Sina Weibo account of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) on Wednesday.
The scope of spreading, the amount of illegal gains involved and the suspects' behavior should be taken into consideration in the sentencing, read the reply from SPP and Supreme People's Court, which will take effect in December.
Other factors, such as whether juveniles are involved, should also be considered in making sure that the sentence is proper, it added.
The cloud drive is frequently used by some people to spread pornography, and its influence is extremely damaging as the information could be spread on a massive scale, an official from the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications was quoted as saying by The Beijing News on Wednesday.
China has intensified its crackdown on pornographic or obscene content online. In a campaign in August and September, Chinese authorities deleted more than 20 million online items containing pornographic or obscene content, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
