People who offer money to network service providers or posters of information to have material deleted will be subject to penalties, under a guideline issued by the Supreme People's Court on Thursday.

The guideline, which has been in the making for two years, invalidates any agreement whose purpose is the deletion of online information in public space.

It would apply, for example, in the case of a company that wants a negative public comment about it removed, or when a poster has second thoughts about a comment he made and wants to retract it.