Seven arrested in China for recruiting women for pornographic live stream

SHANGHAI: Shanghai authorities have approved the arrest of seven people in connection with the recruitment of women for pornographic live-streaming videos.

According to the People's Procuratorate of Shanghai's Minhang District, one of the suspects, Yu Jinchuan, set up servers overseas to run five live-streaming applications from June to December of last year.



Yu hired others to remotely operate the apps and recruited women to appear in sexually explicit performances via the apps. This helped attract many viewers, whose numbers exceeded 10,000 during peak times.

Viewers had to pay membership fees to use the apps, and the money was distributed between the live-streaming performers and the app operators.



According to the procuratorate, revenue from the apps exceeded $4.7 million.

Live streaming emerged in China in 2005, and made a significant breakthrough in 2016. However, problems such as the streaming of obscenity, violence and other inappropriate content have surfaced as the market has grown.

Revenue from live streaming reached 30.45 billion yuan in China last year, according to the Ministry of Culture.