The Supreme Court said Sunday it has convicted a Seoul man on charges of manipulating the number of clicks into a company's Web site in a scheme to lift its popularity ranking on domestic Internet portals.
The top court upheld a lower court's decision to impose a fine of 3 million won (US$2,300) on the 38-year-old man, identified only by his family name Lee, court officials said.
Lee was indicted on charges of using a self-developed program to intentionally multiply the number of clicks and page views of an unidentified company Web site between September 2005 and March 2006. The top court said Lee has been found guilty of interrupting the conduct of business at local portal sites by illegally influencing the popularity and page view rankings through his click manipulation program.
"Lee created a serious obstacle to Internet portals' statistics collection systems, let alone an interference in their business operations," said the Supreme Court in the ruling.
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