China’s media and tech giants show no restraint in posting hacked Hollywood nude selfies

The controversy around this week’s hack attack that leaked nude selfies from dozens of Hollywood celebrities has taken many turns, but throughout it reputable media in the US and Europe have largely avoided showing the stolen photos. But in China, major media outlets and tech giants are showing no such restraint – including China’s biggest web company, Tencent (HKG:0700) – in publishing the private images taken by stars such as Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Kirsten Dunst.

A quick trawl through the biggest news portals on the Chinese web show the leaked photos in full, using only minimal pixelation in a few places to prevent the portrayal of full nudity, which is illegal in China (hat-tip to Nanfang Insider for spotting this). But the illegality of publishing the hacked photos themselves – a crime that the FBI is now investigating – appears not to be troubling these sites.

Here’s what China’s web users can find right now on the Tencent-owned QQ News portal (note: we’ve fully obscured the stolen images, but the sites themselves have not). It’s reporting the story by showing two of the Jennifer Lawrence images:

Another web giant, US-listed Sina (NASDAQ:SINA), is exploiting the hack attack with alacrity, creating one page packed with dozens of the pics, and another featuring a slideshow of 27 of the nude selfies:

And here’s the popular news portal on Netease (NASDAQ:NTES) using a slideshow of 34 pictures in its apparently serious news report on the subject: