On March 13, Nine PBS reportedly sent a letter to Iron Mountain stating that it would “pay any reasonable costs associated with” accessing the data.
After allegedly being unable to communicate with OSS, Nine PBS eventually won a default judgment against the company in the St. Louis Circuit Court, which found that Nine PBS had the “immediate right to possess the data,” according to the complaint. The court also ruled that OSS must return the data “and/or facilitate its transfer to a new vendor,” the complaint says.
However, Iron Mountain refused to give Nine PBS the data because it only has a contract with OSS and, according to Nine PBS’ complaint, because OSS owns “the physical services housing the data.”
Iron Mountain’s spokesperson told Ars that the company only provides physical infrastructure, such as the building, network connectivity, power, and environmental controls.
“Our customers rent space for their servers and other hardware. These are the client’s assets. We don’t have access to the data on the hardware/servers because they belong to our customers,” the company said.
Iron Mountain said the company would violate basic data privacy protocols, breach its contract with OSS, and “potentially [expose] confidential data belonging to other clients of OSS” if it granted “unauthorized access to third-party hardware without a court order.”
Ars asked Nine PBS if it had any backups of the data and what the station would do to prevent this from happening again, but we didn’t receive answers as of publication time.
Nine PBS VP and chief communications officer Leah Freeman shared a statement reading:
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. 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.