Well, the founder of one of the top tech blogs in the world has come down hard against embargoes, and he’s quite “in your face” about it.

“Death to the embargo,” screams the headline over Michael Harrington’s Dec. 17 post on his blog, TechCrunch.com, which, according to Quantcast, attracts 2.4 million visitors per month.

“PR firms are out of control,” Harrington begins. “Today we are taking a radical step towards fighting the chaos. From this point on we will break every embargo we agree to.” In other words, he’s willing to intentionally deceive PR professionals into believing he will honor their embargo request, when in reality, he knows he won’t. He has also included an image of an extended middle finger – presumably a succinct summation of his thoughts – in his post. See http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/

Harrington says that PR people are sending out so many embargoed news items, to so many competing media, and so many of those media are breaking the embargo, that TechCrunch has decided to simply stop honoring them.

Sure, some PR people are lazy or obnoxious, just like some writers (or some plumbers, or some politicians, or some CEOs) are lazy or obnoxious. Still, whether TechCrunch is being reasonable or not (nearly 400 people responded to Harrington’s post, many of them taking him to task), his site’s decision shows a new level of resistance to standard PR/journalist courtesy that cannot be ignored.

You can’t always set the rules in communicating with the media. But you can avoid missteps by knowing what they’re up to – and by using tried and true relationship-building techniques when dealing with them.