PBS Station Sues Data Center for 50TB of Lost Data
A PBS affiliate, Nine PBS, is suing a data center provider to regain access to 50 terabytes of data after its cloud storage provider became unresponsive.
Nine PBS, a PBS affiliate in St. Louis, has filed a lawsuit against Iron Mountain Data Centers in an effort to retrieve approximately 50 terabytes of archived data. The data is at risk of being permanently lost after the station's cloud storage provider, Open Source Storage (OSS), ceased operations and became unresponsive.
The lawsuit alleges that OSS utilized an Iron Mountain data center in Denver to store Nine PBS's digital assets. When OSS became defunct, Nine PBS claims Iron Mountain refused to grant access to the data, despite the station's attempts to recover its extensive archives.
The data in question includes unique and irreplaceable historical content, such as the station's coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, the history of East St. Louis, and reporting on the Great Flood of 1993. Over 11,000 files are reportedly at risk.
This situation highlights the complexities and potential risks associated with third-party data storage solutions. Nine PBS is pursuing legal action to secure its valuable historical records.