GoKawiilA Denver District Court judge set a process for Nine PBS to retrieve its archival data and programming from Iron Mountain Data Centers during a Wednesday hearing.
The St. Louis station sued the information management company July 28 in Denver District Court seeking the return of approximately 50 terabytes of archival material stored in a Denver data center.
The complaint alleged that Iron Mountain refused to return Nine PBS’ materials because OSS, the now-defunct company that the station had contracted with for storage services, technically owned “the physical services housing” the station’s data within Iron Mountain.
District Court Judge Eric Elliff ordered Iron Mountain, which had a separate business relationship with OSS, to cooperate with Nine PBS in any way possible to retrieve the data. He found that the station is the rightful owner of the materials and entitled to recover them from OSS’ storage systems.
Under his order, Nine PBS is to identify a third-party vendor, such as a former OSS employee, who can assist in accessing and retrieving the data from the infrastructure that’s housed in Iron Mountain’s center within 30 days.
Elliff acknowledged the complexities of Iron Mountain’s position as a vendor to OSS, which, according to Nine PBS’ complaint, is in delinquency. Iron Mountain is the “custodian” of Nine PBS’ data, but it isn’t the vendor that contracted with the station to store and preserve its data. That obligation remains with OSS. Under the order, Nine PBS will pay Iron Mountain current and past-due fees for data storage, starting from when OSS stopped paying Iron Mountain for use of its data storage facility.
In a statement to Current, Nine PBS VP and CCO Leah Freeman expressed gratitude to the court for providing a framework for the data retrieval.
“We appreciate the Court’s thoughtful decision establishing a path forward to access and recover our archival materials, which the Court confirmed that Nine PBS rightfully owns,” Freeman said. “These archives represent an important part of our region’s history, and we look forward to ensuring their preservation and protection through the Court-approved process.”
During the hearing, Gregory Rich, an attorney representing Nine PBS, said the station seeks access to a physical cage where the data is housed within Iron Mountain’s facility. The station is in contact with a former OSS employee who is willing to help obtain the data. The attorney noted that the data could potentially be stored in physical form, such as tapes that could be easily retrieved. But if the materials are on a server, Nine PBS could lose the materials forever if Iron Mountain shuts it down.
William Cravens, the attorney representing Iron Mountain, told the judge his client doesn’t know the format of Nine PBS’ materials that were stored by OSS. He expressed concern about whether Nine PBS’ archival material is lumped together with data from other OSS clients. Iron Mountain wants to avoid potentially corrupting the other data, Cravens added.
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