PBS station fears losing 50TB of data after being ghosted by cloud storage provider

After its cloud storage provider went defunct, a PBS affiliate decided to sue a data center provider to regain access to 50TB of TV shows, videos, and other data dating back 70 years.

As reported this week by Current , a trade newspaper covering public broadcasting, St. Louis affiliate Nine PBS filed a lawsuit against Iron Mountain Data Centers on July 28, seeking access to the data. In the litigation filed in Denver District Court, Nine PBS says that its cloud storage provider, Open Source Storage (OSS), used one of Iron Mountain’s Denver data centers to store the channel’s data. However, OSS is being unresponsive, and Nine PBS says Iron Mountain has refused to release its data.

The data in question includes the station’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, East St. Louis’ history, The Great Flood of 1993 , and over 11,000 files, The Denver Post reported in July. The lawsuit claims that “most” of the data is “unique and irreplaceable,” according to the Post.

Last month, a judge blocked Iron Mountain from deleting or modifying the data.

In a hearing on Wednesday, a judge ruled that Iron Mountain must hand over any physical devices holding the data, Current reported today. The judge also said that Nine PBS must find a third party, such as a former OSS worker, who can help retrieve the data within 30 days and without sharing or corrupting data belonging to other OSS clients.

Nine PBS is already communicating with a former OSS employee “who is willing to help,” the report said. If complications arise, such as from the data being encrypted, another hearing will be scheduled. Nine PBS and Iron Mountain must provide updates by September 14.

When reached for comment, an Iron Mountain spokesperson told Ars Technica via email:

Iron Mountain has acted appropriately and responsibly at every step to safeguard customer data and honor our contractual commitments to OSS. Throughout this process, we have been transparent with Nine PBS about our role in this dispute, that we do not have access to their data, and we have made consistent efforts to help them resolve the issue.

According to the complaint, Nine PBS initially hired a company, eventually known as OSS, for “hardware, software, and cloud storage services” for its data, including archival materials.

Nine PBS’ most recent contract with OSS ended on March 6. Nine PBS says it couldn’t get a response from OSS about renewing the contract in February. The station claims its contract gave it 30 days to retrieve data at the end of the contract. However, Nine PBS says it abruptly lost access to the data when the contract expired. The channel says it then learned that OSS had delinquency status with the Colorado Secretary of State and had ceased operations. As of this writing, the Colorado Secretary of State’s business database says that OSS formed in 2021 and is delinquent.

James Tramel, who the complaint describes as a “managing partner of the group that officially acquired” OSS’s assets, reportedly told Nine PBS that Iron Mountain held its data.