On Wednesday, December 2, I received an email from an employee at a local television station telling me that people were buzzing about YouTube videos from the set of Portland, Oregon's CBS affiliate, KOIN-TV. They had been posted by a YouTube user named "kointastic." While some were funny, most were "really embarrassing" for anchors Jeff Gianola and Kelley Day, the email said.

I searched YouTube for "kointastic," but all I saw were links to videos that no longer played. The videos, which were only a day old, had been removed by the user, YouTube said, and the account had been closed. I wondered if these quickly disappearing videos might be worthy of a story, so I looked for people who had seen them and could describe what happened. I wrote the following on Twitter:

Anyone see the behind-the-scenes @KOIN_Local_6 videos posted by "KOINTASTIC" before the account was closed? http://3.ly/vBq

The link was to the search results page on YouTube for the disabled videos. Since then, those results have disappeared entirely.

People who had seen the videos described unflattering and embarrassing outtakes of Gianola and Day during commercial breaks at KOIN several years ago. While it sounded interesting, it didn't seem like news, especially without the video. I moved on to other stories.

But the next day, I received this email from KOIN News Director Lynn Heider with the subject line, "Remove video links from your Twitter account":

From: Lynn Heider <LHeider@koin.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 11:55 AM
Subject: Remove video links from your Twitter account
To: Oregon Media Central <oregonmediagmail [dot] com>

The "kointastic behind the scenes video" lifted by one of your followers from YouTube, was stolen.
That is the property of KOIN Local 6. Kindly remove that posting and link so that we don't have to pursue legal action.

Thank you.

Lynn Heider
News Director
KOIN Local 6
222 SW Columbia St.
Portland, OR 97201
P 503.464.[redacted]
E LHeider@koin.com

I was shocked. And confused.

Then I grew insulted.

Did a professional journalist and the leader of a news organization really have so little respect for others' free speech that she felt she could demand I delete a link and a question? And that legal threat! How gullible did she think I was to believe I had done anything even remotely illegal? I was completely offended.

But I calmed myself down. I reminded myself that Heider had been helpful, reasonable, and even kind with me on earlier stories involving KOIN. Perhaps I was misunderstanding the situation. There was a reference to "one of your followers" and to a "posting." Maybe someone had posted something problematic to my website. I checked, but found nothing. I replied to Heider:

I'm sorry, has someone posted something to my website? Or are you talking about my Twitter post yesterday?

I had decided to be as polite as possible with her. Her legal threat told me she was unpredictable, and she was the only one in the conversation with the resources to go to court. It didn't matter that I had done nothing wrong; I would have no way to deal with a lawsuit, frivolous or not, while still finding time to operate my website and work at my paying job.

I confess to having been a bit scared. I thought that, on the slim chance this had somehow been a valid takedown request for copyrighted material whose posting I was simply unaware of, I should probably indicate my willingness to act on it promptly and in good faith. I published the following to my Twitter account and website:

I received my first threat of legal action from a news director today. I'm trying to understand what they want me to delete.

I figured it was best not to name Heider and send a bunch of angry readers her way. Two hours later, she responded to my email:

Yes, a Twitter post. I don't hold your site responsible, I just need the link removed. Thank you.

I was even more confused. If I wasn't responsible for whatever was wrong, why was she demanding that I take action to fix it? And again: She's a news director! How could an experienced practitioner of journalism possibly feel justified in telling anyone to delete something that is so clearly First Amendment-protected speech?

I reasoned with her:

Oh, there are no videos there, just dead links showing where the videos used to be. Are you sure that's a problem?

And she backed down:

Thank you. If the links won't play we won't pursue it.

But I was still incredulous about my supposed legal jeopardy. I asked copyright scholar and author Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford Law professor and founder of the university's Center for Internet and Society, if I could have ever been in any legal danger, regardless of whether the videos played. It was a straightforward case for him: "You aren't at risk because of a link," he said.

David Ardia, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and director of the Citizen Media Law Project, agreed. "Someone who merely links to defamatory or infringing material does not bear liability. Even in the context of hosting infringing material for a third party, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides a broad safe harbor. For these reasons, it is highly unlikely that a link posted on Twitter could open someone up to legal liability."

So an impotent threat had been averted. But I was still in disbelief that a journalist in a position of importance had demanded I delete my protected speech and had used a legal threat to convince me to do it. It didn't matter that this was just a tweet, or that we had resolved the issue. Journalists should have a higher regard for others' protections under the First Amendment, I thought.

Just to be sure, I asked Ardia: A question like "Have you seen this?" is protected under the First Amendment, right? He agreed. "That question is innocuous," he said.

Realizing that this story was going to be rather lopsided against her, I emailed Heider to tell her that I thought she was trying to protect her employees, which is an admirable trait in a boss, and that I appreciated how helpful she had been with me in the past. But I also said that I felt she had threatened me with legal action for journalistic activity. I asked her if she agreed that I was practicing journalism, and what law she thought I had broken.

On Friday, December 4, Heider emailed me with a surprise. She said that I was not the intended target of the threatened legal action. She wrote, "I actually said 'remove it so we won't have to pursue legal action.' I had the thief in mind."

Assuming that I was supposed to have inferred the words "against someone else" at the end of her sentence, then so, too, should readers of this article infer the words "against someone else" at the end of this story's headline.

But if this is the case, the phrasing of her email seems terribly ambiguous. Pointing out how her words could be construed as a threat against me, I asked Heider if she had understood that ambiguity at the time of her writing. Her response was simply, "Got it."

I'm still unsure why I would be worried about a stranger's legal jeopardy, or why their risk would be dependent on the status of my tweet. She referred to a "follower of yours" in the email, but I have no idea who "kointastic" is, and she doesn't appear to, either. "My biggest concern here," she said in a later email, "is to find out where that stuff came from and which current or former employee stole it and tried to go public without permission."

Heider added that one of her duties as a news director is to "protect the product's license, reputation and ability to be productive. That's hard to do when you are dealing with 10 (or more) year old material that no longer reflects the product's brand, look, set or even some of the personnel included in some of the discussions."

But while I can understand how that's part of her job, I don't see why I should be drafted to help with it.

As to what law I had broken, Heider wrote, "I think once informed you're violating a copyright law by hosting material that you're not free to use, you could be subject to legal consequences."

I asked Heider how she thought I or anyone but YouTube was hosting the videos. She didn't answer.

And regarding whether I was practicing journalism when I wrote what I did on Twitter, she responded, "When? Publishing a tweet? No. Good journalism as you know is a lot more than pushing tweets. It seems that right now, you are trying to check facts and be accurate. That's journalism."

I maintain that I was looking for witnesses to describe what had happened, which is a basic and protected exercise of the journalistic process. I asked Heider if she could point to a definition of journalism she agreed with, hoping to see how it didn't apply to my actions. She didn't answer that question, but she did say she thought that what I was seeking with my tweet was "pretty much hearsay unless you saw" the videos. And while everyone's hearsay matched up, I had reached more or less the same conclusion. But I had exercised my own editorial judgment to reach it.

Heider has not expressed regret for her original email.

As my regular readers know, I've been operating this website anonymously for the past six months, but I recently announced that I would be revealing my identity.

There are many reasons why I've decided to come out. The primary reason is to become a better reporter by developing better relationships with my sources and the subjects of my stories.

But to be honest, a big factor in my decision to come out was the fact that I was able to successfully operate this website for six months without an incident like this one. Had I received this legal threat a few weeks earlier, I may very well have decided to shut this site down. I don't need this kind of stress in my life. And I don't know where I would find the time, money or energy to deal with an actual lawsuit.

But having made a promise to come out, it feels wrong to back out now. I've received kind words of support from people I respect. And when I do come out this Sunday, I may receive more support.

But I'm still an individual blogger. A legal threat is scary regardless of its legitimacy. And I have no one like Heider to stand up for me. Honestly, I'm vulnerable.

If you want to help, please don't harass KOIN or Heider. But I do believe that the best deterrent an individual blogger has against legal threats is to be noisy when they receive one. So if you'd like to spread the word about what happened, feel free to tweet this, share this on Facebook and/or flog this on the website or social network of your choice. And as always, if you're feeling particularly generous, you could help me offset some of the time and money this site takes away from my paying job by making a small contribution.

I hope that, regardless of how much Heider and I disagree on this issue, we can find a way to remain on good terms. I've already indicated a willingness to visit her at KOIN. I hope we can work something out.

I can be reached at infooregonmediacentral [dot] com.