'Stop peddling porn to children'

• Source: Global Times
• [20:34 July 27 2009]
• Comments

China Consumers’ Association received 34,660 complaints about telecom service last year, the vast majority over charges. Photo: CFP

By Jiang Xueqing

A blinking purple light, twin chimes and a rasping buzz filled the bedroom.

It was 1.28 am. Li Qiang, a scholar at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, rolled over and ignored the message.

Li, 40, receives dozens of junk short text messages a day. He checked later. The sender invited him to “fuck a 19-year-old air stewardess and make her vagina bleed!”

Li clicked the links, took some screenshots and videotaped the whole process. Now he had the crucial evidence he needed to go to court against the largest telecom operator in China.

As one link led to another, each click opened a new page with increasingly vulgar pictures and provocative language such as “slut gangbang”, “free is fun”, “I made a pass at her pussy” and on and on.

Without warning or consent, Li suddenly found himself downloading and installing “gallery of big boobs”. The total cost of browsing and downloading the program: 107 yuan ($15.66).

Li next checked his China Mobile phone bill and found “gallery of big boobs” had been replaced by a game named “millionaire fantasy.”

He called China Mobile customer service and asked for help checking on where he had downloaded the game and how. But the customer service representative refused. “There is nothing wrong with our billing,” she replied, repeatedly.

Monternet, a business website launched by China Mobile to provide mobile data application services, charges fees on behalf of the service providers, according to the relevant China Mobile regulations. Depending on the level of cooperation, the service providers split the profits 85-15 percent, 70- 30 or 50-50 with Monternet.

“Driven by profit, China Mobile has become a mobile porn expert,” said Li. “It dares to provide connections to all kinds of content without filtering.”

Li worries about his daughter, a third-year junior high student. She told him some of her classmates spent more than 100 yuan on mobile phone Internet connections every month.

“It’s very unlikely to cost that much if they are just checking e-mail or downloading games,” Li said. “What else could they possibly be browsing, other than porn?”

He sued China Mobile Communications Corporation Beijing for making unreasonable charges and violating consumer rights in June. When the court opened on July 2, he made additional requests for the corporation to stop providing connections to pornographic service providers and issue him a written apology.