LONDON (AP) -- Britain's military said it merely wanted to make its rules on operational secrecy relevant to the Internet age, but its new directive on the matter quickly ignited a debate on the Web, illustrating the difficulty of policing soldiers' online activity.

The June order prohibited soldiers from communicating about defense matters "via a blog, podcast or other shared text, audio or video" or by contributing "to any online community ... bulletin board, wiki, online social network, or multiplayer game."

The order got little attention until it was posted Thursday on an Internet forum popular with military personnel called the British Army Rumor Service. It appeared under the heading "the crackdown on personnel acting on the freedom of speech and thought has finally happened."

Message boards lit up with the news that blogging would be banned, and the order was quickly picked up by the British press.

The military found itself at pains to deny it was trying to silence its soldiers.

"It is nonsense to suggest that the Ministry of Defense is attempting to 'gag' personnel," said Simon MacDowall, the Ministry of Defense's chief spokesman. "A routine instruction has merely been refreshed and reissued."

Another Ministry of Defense spokesman said the rule only applied to communications on defense matters, explaining that soldiers would not have to seek permission to post purely personal material online.

"In the days of Facebook, etc., you can't stop people from speaking," the spokesman said, speaking anonymously in line with department policy.

The ministry said it had updated its rules governing public relations for the online age and incorporated the recommendations of an inquiry into the much criticized decision to allow the British military personnel captured by Iran to sell their stories.

It added that similar regulations were in place in companies and government departments across the world.

Britain's Ministry of Defense isn't the only military struggling to keep on top of evolving technology. In May the Pentagon blocked access to sites such as MySpace and YouTube, citing security worries and bandwidth limits.