What I hear you saying is...

First, Skrenta writes about the cost of reaching the masses via the media-formerly-known-as-"mass" :-)

"The audience isn't huddled every night in front of three TV channels anymore. And you can't reach them with $5M of 1960 dollars. The audience is divided across 300 channels,dvds, tivo, itunes, youtube, bittorrent, flickr, mmorpgs, millions of other options. Saturation marketing costs something like $30+M for a few week blitz to launch a new movie. What if you wanted to saturate like they could in 1960, and drill your damn jingle into every consumer's head until there was no way they couldn't hear it when they saw the box in the drugstore? Costs to launch a new top-tier brand from scratch start at $150M now."

150M. That's some serious bank.

Then I wander over to VentureBeat and learn that a site called "Socializr" is getting sued by trigger-happy TicketMaster. Apparently, Evite -- who is owned by TicketMaster -- wants damages for copyright violations, claiming that Socializr plagiarized some invitation templates.

I had probably heard of Socializr through some medium or another -- probably a daily caffeine-induced scan of TechCrunch or Alarm Clock. But I didn't really know what they did, or cared for that matter. So many Web 2.0 companies, so little time...

But thanks to this lawsuit, I not only know who they are, but by association with Evite, I am now also much more likely to remember what they do. Furthermore, they're now polarized in my mind against odious Ticketmaster. Whether they are guilty of plagiarism is irrelevant: My distate for Ticketmaster forces me to conjure a warmer, fuzzier brand association with Socializr than I otherwise would have.

Now, I'm no expert on copyright law (or even an amateur) but I bet this one settles for well-south of 150M. Probably less than 10% of that? Maybe 1%?

So my question is (always mindful of the "All Press is Good Press" cliche): Are we getting to the point where a lawsuit becomes the most cost-effective way to boot-strap market yourself?