By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling, Sunday, that fined a man three million won ($2,300) after finding him guilty of manipulating the number of clicks on a company's Web site in a scheme to lift its popularity ranking among domestic Internet portals.
The 38-year-old, identified as Lee, was charged with using self-developed software to intentionally multiply the number of clicks and page views for 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 popularity and page view rankings through his click manipulation program.
``Lee created a serious obstacle to portals' statistics collection systems and interfered with their business operations,'' the court said in the ruling.