THE TEN (c) OMMANDMENTS

New religions don't seem to catch on anymore. You go back a few thousand years and it seemed like there was a new religion launched every few months, and you could always find a few pilgrims willing to give them a go.

You know what the problem is? Copyright law. As soon as they introduced copyrights, trying to get people into new religions became awkward. There's that passage in the front of books explaining how you can’t exchange, resell, hire, lend, photocopy or disseminate the text without permission from the author or the publisher. That piece of legalese pretty much stops new religions in their tracks.

Picture the scene - at the foot of Mount Sinai Moses is reading the Commandments out to the enraptured crowd: "Thou shalt have no other gods beside me... Honour your father and mother..." and so on. The crowd are really interested, taking this all in, and they decide this is great stuff. Some of them are scribbling it down in their diaries, texting it to friends on their cell phones, and Moses is, like, "Hold on there - this is copyrighted stuff. You can’t just go passing it around like you own it, guys..."