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PBS loses 50TB of TV history data
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
Nine PBS sued Iron Mountain to regain access to 70 years of archival TV data. The suit highlights risks of relying on a single cloud provider.
Background
Nine PBS, a St. Louis public TV station, lost access to its archives after its cloud storage provider, Open Source Storage (OSS), went defunct. OSS had stored the data at Iron Mountain's Denver facility, and Iron Mountain has refused to return it, citing OSS's ownership of the physical services. The station filed a lawsuit to compel Iron Mountain to preserve and return the data.
How it unfolded
- Mar 6, 2026OSS cut off Nine PBS's access to its data without warning, according to the complaint.
- Apr 2026Nine PBS and eight other PBS stations sued OSS.
- Aug 11, 2026Nine PBS filed a new lawsuit against Iron Mountain after OSS's assets were acquired and data was located at Iron Mountain's Denver facility.
- Aug 13, 2026Gizmodo reported on the lawsuit, highlighting the risks of cloud storage reliance.
Who’s saying what
- Official
- Nine PBS VP Leah Freeman confirmed the lawsuit and the station's dedication to retrieving 70 years of archival materials.
- Caution
- The incident underscores the importance of keeping multiple backups and not relying solely on cloud storage.
Still unverified
The claim that OSS went 'defunct' is based on the lawsuit's allegations and has not been independently confirmed.