Nine PBS gets court path to recover 50TB archive from Iron Mountain
A Denver judge set a process for Nine PBS to seek its 50TB archive after the station says its storage vendor became unresponsive.
By Hana Yoshida · Markets Reporter
3 min read
Denver District Court has set a process for Nine PBS archive recovery, giving the St. Louis public television station a court-supervised way to seek about 50 terabytes of programming and archival files held in infrastructure at an Iron Mountain Data Centers facility. The material spans more than 70 years, and recovery is still not confirmed.
Judge Eric Elliff ruled that Nine PBS owns the materials and may recover them from systems used by its former storage vendor, Open Source Storage, or OSS, according to Current. The station must first identify a third party, potentially a former OSS employee, to help access the systems within 30 days.
How will Nine PBS recover its archive?
Iron Mountain must cooperate with the retrieval effort, Current reported. Once Nine PBS gains access to the OSS storage system, the judge ordered the return of physical devices containing the station's data.
The process includes limits meant to protect other OSS customers. Nine PBS must work with a third party to ensure it does not take or corrupt other clients' files, compare recovered material with its own file list, and indemnify Iron Mountain if other data is damaged during the recovery effort, according to Current.
The format of the files remains uncertain. Nine PBS' lawyer said some material could be on physical media, while other files could be on a server; Iron Mountain's lawyer said the company did not know the storage format. If encryption or other technical problems complicate access, the court may hold another hearing. The parties must update the court by Sept. 14.
Why was Nine PBS unable to access the files?
Nine PBS contracted with OSS for hardware, software and cloud storage services. The station alleges that it lost access when its agreement expired March 6, despite a provision it says allowed 30 days to retrieve its data after services ended. Nine PBS says OSS became unresponsive and ceased operating; reporting also found OSS listed as delinquent with the Colorado Secretary of State.
OSS used Iron Mountain's Denver facility, but Iron Mountain says its contract was with OSS, not Nine PBS. In a statement to Ars Technica, Iron Mountain said it supplies physical infrastructure including space, network connectivity, power and environmental controls, while customers own the servers and hardware placed there.
The company said it could not access or release OSS hardware without authorization because doing so could breach its OSS contract, violate data-privacy procedures and risk exposing confidential data belonging to other OSS clients.
What files are in the 50TB archive?
The station says the archive includes coverage of East St. Louis, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Flood of 1993. Nine PBS filed its Denver lawsuit against Iron Mountain on July 28 after obtaining a default judgment against OSS in St. Louis Circuit Court. According to the Denver complaint, that earlier ruling recognized the station's immediate right to possess the data and directed OSS to return it or arrange a transfer to another vendor.
That judgment did not produce access to the infrastructure at Iron Mountain. Leah Freeman, Nine PBS' vice president and chief communications officer, said the court's latest ruling created a route to preserve and retrieve archival material the station says is important to the St. Louis region.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.