I don’t know if it’s futile. Some things exist purely as symbols of what is tolerable and what isn’t.<p>Here in Canada, we have the Internet, and with the click of a mouse I can find lots and lots of web sites explaining that the holocaust is a giant conspiracy and didn’t happen.<p>Nevertheless, it’s against the law for me to print them in a book and sell them in Canada. We know that people can read all that stuff, but there’s a statement being about what is and isn’t legal to publish.<p>It’s not so much the information that we are trying to block, it’s the signal I would be sending if I opened a bookstore and started selling copies of my book in broad daylight. The meta-signal of selling the book in public is telling people that holocaust denial is no different than any other point of view.<p>Canadians believe there is value in blocking the meta-signal, even if the signal itself flows somewhat freely across the country’s borders.<p>Not everyone agrees, of course. I imagine that most Americans regard Canadian hate-crime laws as being a horrible infringement on civil liberties, right up there with gun control and socialized medicine.<p>I’m not trying to convince anyone to abandon their principles and adopt the Canadian approach, I’m just pointing out that there can be a value in banning the publication of a work even if the work itself is available on the Internet.<p>Whether that value outweighs the other considerations in play is, of course, a public policy decision.