Uniqlo denies incident at a Beijing store fitting room was a publicity stunt
China's top Internet regulator Wednesday spoke to executives of Sina and Tencent, two of the country's top Internet companies, on which a sex selfie video shot in a fitting room of Uniqlo store in Beijing quickly spread on the Internet.
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) ordered Sina and Tencent to fulfill their responsibilities and cooperate with the investigation on the sex video of a young couple having sex in a fitting room of a Uniqlo store in Sanlitun, Beijing, according to its website.
The video that shows a young couple having sex in a fitting room was leaked on Tuesday night and quickly spread on Chinese social media, mainly through Tencent's WeChat and Sina Weibo.
In the video, the man, wearing glasses, a black T-shirt and jeans, is heard telling the naked woman to kiss him while using his iPhone to record the incident in front of the fitting room's mirror.
It is unclear who leaked the video, which has since been deleted online.
Xu Feng, director of the mobile Internet bureau of CAC, said the vulgar video had spread like a virus online and clashed with socialist core values. Many netizens criticized companies which have used the video for marketing purposes and said Sina and Tencent should uphold their social obligations.
Xu said that producing, copying, publishing and selling pornographic material is a crime and the CAC will continue to crack down on vulgar materials online and safeguard the cyber environment.
China's Criminal Law states that people who produce, copy, publish, sell or spread pornographic material for commercial purposes could face up to 10 years in jail.
The CAC's move came following a regulation released in April which says that the regulator has the right to summon Internet company executives when they fail to remove unhealthy materials. Since April, the watchdog has met with executives of over 28 websites.
An online search showed that the woman in the video is allegedly a student at the Business College of Beijing Union University, and the couple's phone numbers and WeChat accounts, a popular social networking application, were also found on the Internet.
The video quickly made the Japanese clothing brand a hot topic with millions of people discussing it on Sina Weibo. Some Netizens said the video might have been the company's publicity stunt. Uniqlo has denied the allegation and said that the company is looking closer into the incident. Many people flocked to the store in Sanlitun area Wednesday to take photos of the "famous store."
"If the video was uploaded by someone other than the couple, he or she would be violating people's privacy and spreading pornographic material," Wang Sixin, a law professor at the Communication University of China in Beijing, told the Global Times.
If it was a company publicity stunt, the company should also be held liable, said Wang, adding that websites should also delete pornographic material as soon as possible.
