Chinese programmer ordered to pay 1m yuan for using virtual private network
Chinese programmer ordered to pay 1m yuan for using virtual private network
Can't wait to get the HexGrad take on why is definitely a very free, very cool thing to do.
It's ridiculous how the crime of using the VPN is just a 200 yuan fine. But the income is considered illegal because of it and they can just seize his entire salary earned, which amounted to just over 1 million yuan.
Tbh, while in this case I think it's egregious because I don't think using a VPN should actually be a crime, I'd love to see that punishment system used in the US.
Imagine if instead of paying fines for illegal stuff and then continuing to ignore the laws, Facebook, X, and other rich people and corporations had to pay back all the income made from doing their illegal activity.
That kind of punishment is used all the time in the USA. It's criminal and/or civil forfeiture depending on the circumstances. But just as in the case in China it's mostly applied on people who can't fight back. Big mega corporation are mostly safe from it. But occasionally it hits rich people.
Civil forfeiture is even heavily abused in the USA because the police department gets to keep the seized money and the burden of proof is shifted. The person who's assets have been seized needs to provide proof of their innocence.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The programmer, surnamed Ma, was issued with a penalty notice by the public security bureau of Chengde, a city in Hebei province, on 18 August.
Ma said the police seized his phone, laptop and several computer hard drives upon learning that he worked for an overseas company, holding them for a month.
Charlie Smith (a pseudonym), the co-founder of GreatFire.org, a website that tracks internet censorship in China, said: “Even if this decision is overturned in court, a message has been sent and damage has been done.
VPNs, which help users circumvent the “great firewall” of internet censorship by making it look as if their device is in a different country, operate in a legal grey area in China.
The government generally turns a blind eye to the relatively small number of individuals who use the technology to access websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and, often, view pornography.
In June, Radio Free Asia reported that a Uyghur student, Mehmut Memtimin, was serving a 13-year sentence in Xinjiang for using a VPN to access “illegal information”.
The original article contains 682 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
upon learning that he worked for an overseas company, holding them for a month.
I mean, I dislike China's censorship and dictatorship as much as the next guy, but I feel like working for a company that isn't China is the bigger deal here.
Yup. That alone will break many tax and employment laws in most countries, leading to serious lawsuits pretty much anywhere in the world. China's government type just sped up the whole process a bit, but the result would be pretty much the same elsewhere.
No, that alone doesn't break any employment or tax laws in most countries. You just have to declare it properly and pay your taxes. And the employer has to follow local employment laws as if it were a local company. But that just means following the maximum allowed working hours, mandatory holidays, minimum wage, etc.
China is one of the few countries that might have an issue with people working for foreign companies in general.
Him using the VPN to start a gofundme
Well that's a very worrying development
