The ban achieved no practical impact in the Internet age as it was not global.  If there were not already easy access to the book through the Internet [i] , then it might be possible to argue that there was some practical purpose to be served by continuing its suppression. However, when any disaffected teenager can gain easy access to the text while sitting alone in their bedroom, it seems foolish that it cannot also be examined in the cooler light of their history class.  The issue is not access to the text; it’s not even really about ownership of the book – both of which are already possible – but rather about how the book is treated. Not publishing or using the book up until now has simply maintained a situation that was put in place after WWII, which in some ways served a purpose, of saying there was no particular reason for a change at any particular time during that process. However, as the seventieth anniversary of the end of the war comes into view, it seems reasonable that the book should be treated as exactly what it is; an interesting historical artefact, to be examined as one might any other.  [i] For example through Project Gutenberg, here .