Police have arrested four students accused of posting the video of the teenage
TV soap star having sex with her boyfriend.
Authorities this week announced the arrests of the four Hanoi men and women,
aged between 21 and 25. They would be held for three months pending an inquiry.
They will be held for three months pending an investigation, Thanh Nien
newspaper said.
Hoang Thuy Linh, the lead actress of Vang Anh's Diary, was at the centre of a
storm nearly two weeks ago when Internet users downloaded the clip, which
initially ran for five minutes, from a video-sharing website and began
circulating it.
Vietnam state television canned her popular nightly show after the clip was
revealed.
The soap, an interactive youth drama in its second season, offered lessons on
teenage issues and allowed viewers to vote on moral and lifestyle questions by
mobile text message and email.
It had been controversial in the communist country, praised by some for
addressing youth issues but criticised by others for focusing on the concerns
of the fashionable, urban middle-class elite.
Authorities believe the clip was stolen from the laptop of Linh's boyfriend.
Linh and her boyfriend, the son of a senior police official, would not face
charges, Hanoi police director Nguyen Duc Nhanh told Phap Luat Ho Chi Minh City
newspaper.
Hilton's sex tape, made with then-boyfriend Rick Salomon, surfaced just before
the start of her reality TV series, The Simple Life and helped propel her to
superstardom.
But the backlash against the Vietnamese star has been strong.
"I ban my children from watching the (TV) drama, because I don't want them to
act like her," Huynh Dung, of Saigon, told the Thanh Nien daily.
"It could not be considered a mistake. It was the essential result of her
debauched lifestyle," Dung said.
Sex education, a taboo topic in Vietnam, is not included in classroom
instruction.
Police in Hanoi arrested a man on Wednesday with 170 VCDs of the clip as they
tried to halt sales of the footage, which is widely available on the black
market.
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