LIVE video streams from a two-day trial that concluded Friday in Haidian District People’s Court in Beijing attracted over 1 million views online.

Wang Xin, former CEO of Shenzhen-based QVOD Technology Co., and three executives denied charges of spreading pornography for profit.

Seventeen microblog posts by the court showed video streams from five stages of the trial. The streams sparked debate and attracted more than 1 million views during the trial. At the peak time, 40,000 people viewed the court hearing online simultaneously.

According to prosecutors, 21,251 of 29,841 files that police obtained from servers related to QVOD were pornographic.

“In this case, QVOD not only provided an online platform for users to upload and publish videos, but users could also locate, download and spread video resources by clicking the URL links on the platform. At the same time, QVOD required users to download its QVOD player in order to watch these videos,” prosecutors said.

But Wang claimed the company itself was not responsible for spreading the videos. He blamed the pornographic content on third parties. The four defendants argued QVOD itself focused on program design and technical research.

“QVOD was simply a tool used to play videos. Even though it has been used by others to watch or spread pornography, the responsibility should lie with those users, rather than the defendants,” Zhao Zhijun, Wang’s lawyer, said in an interview after the trial, adding there are no laws in China that require software developers to guarantee users are not involved in illegal acts.

“Wang and his company established a filtering and reporting system to prevent users from uploading and watching porn videos, so we can’t say Wang intentionally allowed pornographic material to be spread via its platform,” said Zhao.

Prosecutors argued that the current laws and regulations do specify responsibilities for China’s online service providers. They said QVOD’s inaction allowed a number of pornographic videos to go viral on the Internet.

Zhao said QVOD, as a video service provider, is not required to conduct substantive examinations about whether the video content is illegal. It is the duty of law enforcement departments.

Prosecutors suggested a punishment of 10 years in jail for Wang, while Wang’s lawyer demanded that the court release Wang on bail pending trial.

In June 2014, the company, founded in 2007, was fined 260 million yuan (US$39.62 million) for copyright infringement. Before it was shut down in 2014, QVOD had around 300 million users.

The court will announce a verdict later for the defendants.

(Han Ximin)