China law blind to nude Web chats

BEIJING - Chinese prosecutors have dropped a case against a housewife who organized online chats in the nude, after discovering there was no basis in law to bring charges, state media reported on Wednesday.

The 36-year-old woman, surnamed Li, had been charged with ”organizing pornographic activities” for using a Web cam to chat with people on the Internet in the buff and for organizing online chats for nudists.

But law officers investigating the case found that nude chat rooms were not defined in China’s pornography laws, an oversight the official Xinhua news agency described as a legal ”blind spot.”

“Under existing laws, it is inappropriate to treat this as a criminal offence,” Xinhua quoted a prosecutor in the western Beijing district of Shijinshan as saying.

The Shijinshan district court found there was little legal basis for the charge and turned down the case, forcing prosecutors to withdraw the charge.

Once nearly wiped out under the puritanical rule of Mao Zedong, pornography is now readily available in China despite periodic government campaigns against it.

Last week, the public security ministry announced a new campaign against Internet pornography, saying it had ”contaminated cyberspace and perverted China’s young minds.”

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