A public media archive caught in a broken storage chain
Nine PBS, a St. Louis affiliate of the U.S. public broadcaster PBS, is suing to regain access to about 50TB of data after its cloud storage provider, Open Source Storage, became unresponsive.
According to Current, the public broadcasting trade publication, Nine PBS filed the lawsuit against Iron Mountain Data Centers on July 28 in Denver District Court. The station says OSS used one of Iron Mountain’s Denver data centers to store its data, but OSS is no longer responding and Iron Mountain has refused to release the data. Ars Technica reported that Iron Mountain said it does not have access to the data on the hardware or servers.
What is at stake
The archive reportedly includes television programs, videos, and other materials going back roughly 70 years. The Denver Post reported that the data includes the station’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, East St. Louis history, The Great Flood of 1993, and more than 11,000 files. The lawsuit says that “most” of the material is unique and irreplaceable.
Key facts in the dispute:
- Data volume: about 50TB
- Archive span: around 70 years
- File count: more than 11,000 files
- Cloud storage provider: Open Source Storage
- Data center involved: Iron Mountain’s Denver facility
For non-specialist readers, cloud storage still depends on physical infrastructure. Data ultimately resides on servers or storage devices in facilities that provide power, networking, cooling, and physical security. A data center operator may host the hardware without controlling the customer accounts, encryption keys, or file systems needed to read the data.
Court orders preservation and device handover
The court has already taken steps to preserve the material. Last month, a judge blocked Iron Mountain from deleting or modifying the data. In a hearing on Wednesday, a judge ruled that Iron Mountain must hand over any physical devices holding the data, Current reported.
The order does not mean the archive can be restored immediately. The judge also said Nine PBS must find a third party, such as a former OSS employee, to help retrieve the data within 30 days, while avoiding disclosure or corruption of data belonging to other OSS customers. Current reported that Nine PBS is already communicating with a former OSS worker who is willing to help.
If complications arise, including encryption issues, another hearing will be scheduled. Nine PBS and Iron Mountain must provide updates by September 14.
The larger lesson: ownership is not the same as recoverability
The dispute highlights a common risk in outsourced storage. Nine PBS may claim ownership of its archive, but practical access depends on contracts, operating credentials, storage architecture, encryption keys, and the continued functioning of intermediaries.
Iron Mountain’s statement that it cannot access the data is consistent with the role many data center providers play: they supply the facility and infrastructure, while customers or cloud providers manage the systems and data. When the cloud provider disappears, the party with the physical hardware may still lack the technical or legal ability to simply extract a customer’s files.
For public media organizations, museums, schools, and archives, the case is a warning. Long-term cloud storage plans need a clear exit process, independent backups, and clarity over encryption keys and recovery procedures. As cloud and data center services remain layered, customers will increasingly need to ask a practical question before a crisis: if the provider stops responding, who can actually get the data back?