internet - New regulations, no news

Both the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) and the State-Council have issued rules on the internet, wrote state-news agency Xinhua earlier today. I discarded what I saw as Chinese propaganda earlier today. But news must be slow today, so my colleagues are out in force this non-news. Here is the Reuters story and here AP. Also I got a few calls from colleagues back in Shanghai.
The official news dispatch does not indicate what is really changing and it would not be the first time actually nothing is happening. It just had to add to the 'feel good' stories in the Chinese media about a government that is taking care of its citizens. Then, the western media turn around this piece of propaganda, reframe it, and use it as an example to show an evil Chinese government curtailing the freedom of speech on the internet.
It is unfortunately a very familiar pattern. As long as there is no information I believe there is no news. Yelling to hard about this kind of Chinese dressing-up is especially unhelpful in cases where really things are happing, for example when people do get in jail for the wrong reasons.

Update I: As Tim points in the link to the Shanghai Daily: the new regulations are creating some new problems. For a big part, the regulations are repeating obsolete regulations from the year 2000. (They might be disclosing state secrets thougy).

... online firms must register regularly, often every year, with national or province-level information offices; obscene and subversive content is forbidden; comments written in online forums and the writer's IP (Internet Protocol) address must be saved for 60 days for possible use by government or police authorities.

But there are also new rules that make starting an online news business tougher:

The new rules state that any online news publisher must have at least 10 million yuan (US$1.25 million) in registered capital and it must employ at least five professional news editors with no less than three years' working experience in the traditional media.
They also prevent any company that has been in trouble with online regulators within two years from providing online news.

A reader from the Ming Pao in Hong Kong picked up this change:

I was reading today's Mingpao whose Chinese article says the new regulation specifies 2 additional categories for unhealthy info this time, in addition to the 9 categories specified 5 yrs ago. One concerning unauthorized assemblies, the other concerning unregistered non-governmental organizations -- look like a response to theanti-Japanese protests earlier this year.

Update II: More details as published by the New York Times:

Major search engines and portals like Sina.com and Sohu.com, used by millions of Chinese each day, must stop posting their own commentary articles and instead make available only opinion pieces generated by government-controlled newspapers and news agencies, the regulations stipulate.

The rules also state that private individuals or groups must register as "news organizations" before they can operate e-mail distribution lists that spread news or commentary. Few individuals or private organizations are likely to be allowed to register as news organizations, meaning they can no longer legally distribute information by e-mail.