posted in Technology
PBS broadcaster loses access to 50TB of data comprising 70 years of TV history after contracted cloud storage vendor goes defunct
cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1332594/pbs-broadcaster-loses-access-to-50tb-of-data-comprising-70-years-of-tv-history-after-con
current.org/2026/08/nine-pbs-sues-iron-mountain-over-blocked-access-to-archival-data/The first time I heard about cloud storage, I wondered why anyone would store their stuff with a third party, for reasons EXACTLY like this. This is the exact scenario I thought of.
And while we’re talking about this specific case, presumably all the other customers of that cloud storage company list all their stuff, too.
Using cloud is not the problem here and never has been an issue from a technical design standpoint, it’s having the data only with one cloud provider that allows this to happen.
The only customers of that cloud provider that lost their stuff are the customers that would have lost their stuff using any other method they’d implement, because the only way you can lose your data this way is through poor design.