China orders payout in Internet harassment case

A COURT in the glorious People's Republic of China has ordered a bog site and a woman to pay up for harassing Wang Fei, whose wife topped herself after he had an affair.

A Beijing court ordered Daqi.com and a woman who set up her web page on the site to pay Wang $1,200 in damages for posting and circulating information related to the blog.

Wang's wife, Jiang Yan, killed herself in December 2007. She had been penning a blog for a while about her husband who was having an affair. Her bog showed up on many websites across China after her death. Wang was castigated by other boggers who carried out Internet searches for his contact details.

The court decided that Daqi.com and a friend of Wang's wife who set up a web page on the issue caused "emotional distress" by invading Wang's privacy and posting his personal data online.

Daqi.com made a special web page that revealed the name of Wang's mistress and posted photos of her with him.

Wang eventually lost his job when colleagues found out about his affair, and wibblers wrote obscenities on the door of his parents' apartment, the news agency said.

Even the mainstream media waded into Wang for shagging around. µ

L'Inq
AP