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- Hacker News
- I'm a bit confused from Iron Mountain's response about how they are worried that data could be co-mingled with other data? That would be an interesting way to back up data.by vondur
- The ruling seems fair and reasonable, and I'm surprised they couldn't come to the same conclusion without a court.by boscillator
- The court got this right. This is when you need a special master to help with cleanup after a bankruptcy.
We saw something like this when TechShop went bankrupt, with member property in storage on the premises. The bankruptcy trustee set up a procedure where former members could make an appointment to retrieve their property, escorted by a representative of the trustee. Huge pain, but necessary.
by Animats - Earlier coverage (St. Louis KETC / Nine PBS sues Iron Mountain for data access):
"Nine PBS sues Iron Mountain over blocked access to archival data" <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49285418>
This is working out largely as I'd suggested it should, albeit with a court's intervention. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49293058>.
I'd still argue that I.M. should have anticipated this situation, and have some process in place to address it. "See a court" might well be part of that process.
by dredmorbius - > 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.
> Elliff ordered the immediate return of any physical devices that hold Nine PBS’ data once access to OSS’ storage system is granted…
> Once Nine PBS retrieves its data, the station must work with a third party to ensure that no data from other OSS customers is among those materials.
I don’t love this call. Handing over any disk has several problems. It could easily contain very sensitive data from another client. It’s inherently one-sided (another client can’t make the same request if the disk is already gone). And it’s being handed over to a PBS station that doesn’t seem to have the technical chops to manage data backups/security.
I want them to get their data back, but this needs a technical intermediary that handles all client data equally.
by scosman - Open Source Storage (OSS), the vendor in question, was around for two decades before going out of business last year. The first and last archived versions of its web site:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040628023451/https://www.ossto...
https://web.archive.org/web/20250329140721/https://www.ossto...
(The first version isn't too exciting. It's a broken Flash site.)
by js2 - I think stories like these highlight the need for clearer (not necessarily more) regulations around contractor/subcontractor/client relationships and what happens when one of them goes tits up.
There were rampant issues in the fintech world that exploded when Synapse, a banking as a service provider, went bankrupt and their ledger didn't match what partner banks had in their accounts. End users were told "your deposits are FDIC insured", but in bankruptcy court the judge was sort of at a loss over how to rectify things - the banks weren't insolvent, and the FDIC (rightfully) said "hey, this isn't our problem, our regulated entities are in compliance". Looks like a similar situation happened here, where the contractors are both doing the "not it" thing.
I feel like a lot of tech innovation and "business process innovation" over the past 15 years was just ignoring regulations that were built up over decades, only discovering the reasons for those regulations when the tide went out and seeing that lots of companies had been pantsless the whole time.