YNOT – As China continues its assault on “unwholesome” content on the web and mobile phones, citizens have become increasingly afraid even flirty messages between lovers may land them in jail.Rest easy, authorities assured the populace last week. The country’s anti-pornography laws are unlikely to trap devoted couples in their ever-widening net. Porn is in the eye of the beholder … with a little oversight from Big Brother, whose only interest is in ensuring quality of life for its people.

“If a friend feels offended [by a pornographic email or text message], then it is possible there is an offense, but if this friend likes [the message] and both exchange messages, then surely there does not have to be an offense,” Hu Yunteng, an official in charge of research at the Chinese Supreme Court, told Beijing News. “So for friends or colleagues who exchange vulgar content or make fun between themselves by messages, at this level the full weight of the legal apparatus will not be brought to bear against the vulgarity of such people.”

The government’s primary scrutiny of explicit content, he said, falls on “criminals responsible for the mass diffusion of pornographic messages.”

The confusion stems from some vagueness in China’s decency laws, which allow police to detain for 10 days anyone who transmits titillating or insulting material or who distributes material that condemns official policy. Last year the laws resulted in the arrest of almost 5,400 people and closed thousands of websites.

To combat misconceptions about the use of the internet and cell phones for personal communication, authorities have begun a mass-distribution campaign of their own. The official “red” messages, meant to displace “yellow” pornographic communication, transmit political ideology and values, according to official news agency Xinhua.

One Chinese man didn’t get the memo. Huang Yizhong received a 13-year prison sentence for defying the law and running an adult website that reportedly attracted more than 4,000 paying members and earned him nearly U.S. $500,000 since 2005, Xinhua reported. The court fined him about U.S. $14,600 of the profits.

According to Xinhua, Huang pleaded guilty to charges of distributing porn from a U.S.-based server. His site contained more than 1,000 adult video clips when he was arrested in July 2009.