International Law

ShanghaiExpat.com reported to Chinese Network Security Police

By Chris Devonshire-Ellis

Libel suit may follow - China based social websites increasingly under fire for publishing inappropriate content

February 5th - The social expatriate website Shanghaiexpat.com has had a legal case against it lodged with the network security division of the Public Security Bureau in Shanghai for libel and ?disrupting social harmony? it has been reported today. The site, which last year celebrated its fifth anniversary, has proved popular with local expatriates yet has consistently drawn criticism for its generally negative online forums and it’s sometime racist portrayal of Chinese nationals and the general living environment in China, it has been alleged.

The complaint also alleges that libelous material has been ‘consistently’ posted on a regular basis over the past two years against a number of Shanghai based expatriate businesspeople, with no effective moderation put in place to prevent libelous material from appearing. Apparently, a number of requests to the website owners to ban the offending members from submitting articles to the domain, and to provide details of the IP addresses and other subscriber information for the filing of individual complaints against the protagonists directly were ignored, hence the eventual action against the Shanghaiexpat.com domain itself. (more…)

Full post as published by China Briefing Blog on February 04, 2008 (boomark / email).