PBS Station Sues Iron Mountain to Save 70 Years of Lost Archives — SkimNews
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- Nine PBS lost access to 50TB of data spanning 70 years of programming after contracted cloud storage vendor Open Source Storage (OSS) went defunct and cut off access despite the station still having 30 days remaining to retrieve its data under contract terms
- Investigation revealed Open Source Storage had a defunct website and was listed as delinquent under the Colorado Secretary of State; Nine PBS had worked with the company and its predecessor since 2019
- James Tramel, who claimed to be managing partner of a group that acquired OSS, communicated with Nine PBS for about a month before abruptly ending contact and saying he had been "defrauded" into acquiring the company, with ownership reverting to prior owners
- A court ruled that Nine PBS had full rights to its OSS-stored data and ordered OSS to facilitate transfer to a new vendor, but Iron Mountain initially agreed to release the data then backtracked, claiming OSS owned it
- Iron Mountain finally confirmed it held the data after being notified of the pending Colorado case, but now refuses to turn it over without risking a lawsuit from OSS — leaving Nine PBS to seek a court order
- Nine PBS VP and CCO Leah Freeman described the at-risk archive as "70 years of our organization's history," with the station having no confirmed backups of its data
Why it matters: For a public broadcaster, the potential loss of 70 years of programming history isn't just an IT failure — it's an irreversible cultural wipeout. Nine PBS now races to secure a court order before OSS stops paying data center bills and the 50TB archive is permanently deleted, with no backups in place.
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