Nine PBS is afraid it will lose over 70 years of archival materials after its contracted cloud storage vendor, Open Source Storage (OSS), apparently went out of business. The station used OSS to store over 50TB of data but suddenly lost access earlier this year. OSS cut off data access even though Nine PBS still had 30 days to retrieve its data after the contract ended.

Nine PBS discovered OSS utilized Iron Mountain’s services and sent a demand letter to preserve the data. Iron Mountain initially admitted holding the data but later backtracked, claiming OSS owned it. The station also sued OSS and its leadership, pausing after a person claiming to be the new owner, James Tramel, reached out. That communication ended abruptly when Tramel said he had been defrauded into acquiring OSS.

The court ruled that Nine PBS had rights to access its data and ordered OSS to facilitate transfer to a new vendor. However, Iron Mountain now refuses to turn over the data, citing risk of being sued by OSS. Nine PBS has sued Iron Mountain to ensure the data is not deleted.

The situation remains unresolved. Nine PBS VP and CCO Leah Freeman said the data represents 70 years of the organization’s history. It is unclear if the station has backups, a concerning oversight for a major organization. Nine PBS must act quickly to secure its data through a court order.