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/
According to the article, the data is not clearly lost. It’s that their provider, OSS, had a subcontract with Iron Mountain to host the data storage. When OSS abruptly went defunct, PBS had no direct legal path to access the data in Iron Mountain, and no assurance Iron Mountain would preserve it. It filed the lawsuit to make sure the data was preserved and affirm a legal basis to recover the data.
So the headline’s use of “loses access” is accurate but a little misleading. That said, it is a great argument for reliable data preservation.
Well, yes, but consider that others using the OSS service may not have the resources of PBS to file suit and litigate the issue, and they may well lose their data forever.
Good argument to not use the service.
The whole company is sketchy
web.archive.org/web/…/cloudPricing
There is nothing open source, their address is the iron mountain denver datacenter address
That page looks like it was directly ripped from wasabi.com/pricing, including the “Ball appliance” which appears to be a Wasabi-only product. This reeks of “I know a guy who does storage” and it’s just a few open source products bolted to another storage API with upcharging and a corporate website