FOUR executives at a Shenzhen-based technology firm will go on trial today in Beijing on charges of profiting from the spread of pornography and pirated videos on the Internet, the Nanfang Daily reported yesterday.

    Shenzhen QVOD Technology Co. was one of China’s most widely used video sharing platforms.

    The four QVOD executives are accused of making profits by distributing pornographic videos, TV dramas and other videos without authorization by copyright holders.

    Beijing police said they had confirmed that four of the company’s servers had provided 21,251 pornographic videos, according to yesterday’s sznews.com.

    QVOD’s CEO, Wang Xin, denied the charge, saying QVOD was only a video-sharing platform, which didn’t provide videos with pornographic content. He also said that the company had taken multiple measures to stop the spread of porn videos.

    QVOD, founded in Shenzhen in 2007 under the Chinese name Kuai Bo, gained notoriety for its peer-to-peer video streaming application, which provided around 50 million users access to pornographic content and pirated materials. Its user base quickly grew to 300 million in 2012.

    In 2010, authorities began investigating Wang for distributing pornography through QVOD. In November 2013, three major players, Youku Tudou, Sohu Video and Tencent Video established an alliance to fight against copyright infringement by QVOD and Baidu’s video service, demanding 300 million yuan (US$46.15 million) in compensation.

    Police raided QVOD’s office April 22, 2014, and three executives were taken into custody for investigation. Wang had left China before the raid. Wang was repatriated back to the country Aug. 8, 2014, after 110 days on the run.

    The company’s Internet business license was revoked in May 2014 and Shenzhen’s market supervision administration fined QVOD 260 million yuan for profiting from illegal content, tripling the money the company had made by violating copy rights law. (Han Ximin)