HONG KONG -- A Chinese software engineer sentenced to two years in jail for using the Internet to undermine the state has launched an appeal, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said on Monday.
Lin Hai, the 30-year-old owner of a computer software company, filed the appeal last week in the Shanghai People's High Court, the group said.
In January, a Shanghai court sentenced Lin to two years in jail for providing email addresses to a US-based dissident publication.
It was the first-known instance of a Chinese court challenging Internet use as a threat to state security.
Lin was arrested last March and accused of trying to undermine state power by using the Internet to send some 30,000 email addresses to VIP Reference, a dissident publication in the United States.
China has seen explosive growth in the use of the Internet in recent years. Estimates vary, but one official publication put the number of users at 2.1 million last year, compared with 670,000 in 1997.
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