On Dec. 15, 2016, a suspect surnamed Liu was arrested by the People's Procuratorate of Longgang District in Shenzhen on suspicion of spreading pornographic videos while selling VR glasses on Taobao, the first case of its kind in the city. For the purpose of gaining more sales and profits, Liu sent pornographic videos for free to more than 700 buyers online.

VR glasses are popular among the young Chinese. [File photo]

Until now, 27 suspects in nine cases have been arrested for spreading pornographic videos while selling VR glasses and 19 suspects among them will be charged on suspicion of spreading pornographic items.

According to the People's Procuratorate of Shenzhen Municipality, all of the suspects are connected to Taobao. Some are shop owners on Taobao, some are salesman on Taobao and some are responsible for after-sales service.

Most of the suspects are from the post-90s generation. The oldest suspect was born in 1986 while the youngest suspect is less than 18 years old. These suspects provided pornographic videos by two methods: Firstly, they established QQ groups and attracted buyers to join in the QQ groups, from where pornographic videos were provided. Secondly, the suspects uploaded the pornographic videos onto Baidu cloud storage and shared the pornographic videos with the buyers.

Some suspects said they provided pornographic videos with the aim of increasing sales and good reviews on Taobao, with some making huge profits. One online shop made about 3 million yuan (US$435,000) in sales revenue monthly.

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