governments always fear free speach. and china is terrified of the internet. Original Article New Internet bans reveal China's fears THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Two new Internet bans may offer insight into the Chinese government's biggest fears. One bars Internet news services from inciting "illegal" assemblies, marches and demonstrations; the other prohibits activities on behalf of "illegal" civil groups. Together, they evince the communist regime's concerns over growing civil unrest - and particularly technology's role in fostering protests and strikes, says Julien Pain, who heads the Internet Freedom desk at Reporters Without Borders in Paris. While the government has been successful at blocking specific Web sites, Pain said, "what is more difficult to censor are usually the forums and chat rooms." Add to that Web journals known as blogs, cell-phone text messaging and e-mail lists - all potential outlets for unchecked political commentary. Last week's update to Internet regulations issued in 2000 is vague, but human-rights activists and scholars on China say the new rules define online news services more broadly. The state-run China Daily even cites SMS text messages, a fast and efficient communications means available to anyone with a mobile phone, as falling under the new umbrella. Demonstrations on the rise "The old regs were focused more on news sites," said Jim Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Since then, "people have used SMS to organize themselves, to pass news around, to rally crowds of protesters." The two new speech prohibitions appear directed at discouraging protests and restricting dissidents. The other nine - including bans on rumors, pornography and defamatory statements online - came largely from the 2000 regulations. Organized demonstrations have been on the rise in China, especially the impoverished countryside, where anger has been growing over widespread graft, industrial pollution and seizures of land for development. The government says there were 74,000 major protests last year nationwide. Although the Chinese government encourages Internet use for education and business, it keeps a tight watch, blocking material it deems subversive or pornographic. Online dissidents who post items critical of the government, or those expressing opinions in chat rooms, are regularly arrested and charged under vague security laws. "Before the Net came around, Xinhua (China's official news agency) was pretty much where you got the news," said Jonathan Zittrain, an Internet legal scholar affiliated with Oxford and Harvard universities. "This does seem to me an acknowledgment that news can be made by people, and they are struggling with that."