Nine PBS Wins Court Order to Recover 50 Terabytes of Archived Data

On March 13, Nine PBS reportedly sent Iron Mountain a letter agreeing to pay “all reasonable costs associated with” accessing and transferring its archived data.

After reportedly being unable to communicate with its former data-storage provider, Nine PBS ultimately secured a default judgment. According to the station’s complaint, the St. Louis Circuit Court ruled that Nine PBS had an “immediate right to possession of the data.” The court also ordered OSS to “return and/or facilitate the transfer to a new vendor” of the station’s files.

Iron Mountain, however, declined to release the data directly to Nine PBS. The company said it contracts only with OSS and that, according to the complaint, OSS owns the “physical services that house the data.”

An Iron Mountain spokesperson told Ars that the company provides physical data-center infrastructure, including buildings, network connectivity, electricity, and environmental controls.

“Our customers rent space for servers and other hardware. These are customer assets. As the hardware/servers belong to the customers, we do not have access to the data on the hardware/servers,” the company said.

Iron Mountain argued that releasing the data without authorization could violate data-privacy requirements and its contract with OSS. The company also warned that allowing “unauthorized access to third-party hardware without a court order” could potentially expose or delete sensitive information belonging to other OSS customers.

Ars asked Nine PBS whether it maintained backup copies of its archives and what steps it would take to prevent a similar data-access problem in the future. The station had not responded by the time of publication.

Nine PBS Vice President and Chief Communications Officer Leah Freeman issued the following statement:

We appreciate the court’s thoughtful decision to establish a path to access and recovery of our archival materials, which the court confirmed are rightfully owned by Nine PBS. These archives represent an important part of our region’s history, and we look forward to ensuring their preservation and protection through a court-approved process.