BEIJING — Chen Hui, the 28-year-old webmaster behind China’s largest and most popular adult website, will spend the rest of his life in prison by order of the Taiyuan Intermediate People’s Court in Shanxi province today.Chen and his eight collaborators were responsible for the Qingseliuyuetian (Pornographic Summer) website, which opened in 2004, as well as three others. Their efforts attracted the attention of more than 600,000 subscribers — and the Chinese authorities.

The government run Xinhua News Agency announced the sentence today, adding that Chen’s fellow site developers received prison terms ranging from 13 months to 10 years for profiting from the dissemination of pornographic material. In addition to his prison time, Chen must pay a $12,500 fine.

Authorities are reported to have told Xinhau that the exact amount of profit made by Chen and his comrades is impossible to know, although they found $25,000 in a shared bank account. Upon closing, Pornographic Summer contained more than 9 million images and articles.

Although China has the world’s second-largest online user population, with more than 123 million online, its use is only officially sanctioned for educational and business purposes. All content is rigorously controlled, with access to materials considered to be pornographic or subversive being blocked.