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Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

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Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#51
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever claims "your deposits are FDIC insured" needs to be prosecuted as fraud and scam artists. “Your” the company’s deposits in the bank is FDIC insured. My deposit with you the company is not. When the bank goes belly up, your deposit is FDIC secured up to the account limit which is tiny in the scale of things. When your company goes belly up, my deposit is gone.

> When the bank goes belly up, your deposit is FDIC secured up to the account limit which is tiny in the scale of things. The FDIC is meant to protect individual people from loosing all of their money from the collapse of a bank, currently at $250k. If you have more wealth than that yet have it all as cash in a single account, then, you're pretty much an ID10T. For regular mere mortals, that's a helluva lot better th…

> If you have more wealth than that yet have it all as cash in a single account, then, you're pretty much an ID10T.

SVB collapse has shown that the 250k limit is basically not relevant. Maybe if a big consumer bank like Chase failed then 250k would be the max paid out, but we haven't seen that.

And OP is referring to Synapse, where the FDIC could not help any of the americans who lost their savings because the underlying banks didn't fail. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/22/synapse-bankruptcy-thousands...

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#52

> 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. Apparently you didn't find them important enough to have backups. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in net income and they couldn't afford a cheap NAS with 4 disks. Incredible.

They did, they contracted with a vendor to store and backup the data. If that is insufficient then just about every customer of AWS, Azure, GCP, OCP, and every other managed storage provider is guilty of the same sin.

> If that is insufficient then just about every customer of AWS, Azure, GCP, OCP, and every other managed storage provider is guilty of the same sin.

Yes, they are as guilty! You say that as if it's a ridiculous assertion. Have you not read the occasional HN submission where someone is locked out of their cloud provider for dubious reasons?

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#53
post #48

I previously commented on this when a different, earlier news article and it wasn't clear at the time if the storage company was a colocation customer, or a dedicated server customer of Iron Mountain: ============================================= (from 4 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49293326 The news article is really not clear about whether this was, relative to the company "OSS": a) OSS is a coloc…

For some reason, despite these things being rather simple and concrete distinctions, all the reporting around the case keeps being confusing, vague, and contradictory. I had been rather convinced by the Ars Technica article [1] that Iron Mountain was just the data center operator and this was colocation of completely OSS-owned and managed equipment. Iron Mountain's statements there certainly seem to say that. There's…

Part of the problem would be that we have "tech" journalists writing this who have never been on either side of the transaction directly as a colocation customer, or an ISP/datacenter/hosting company, and drafted/reviewed contracts for such services. Nor have they ever gone and like, personally laid hands on a 2U rackmount server in a cabinet in a colo.

I'm not sure that I could reasonably expect a "journalist" to have those qualifications, but they could at least attempt to interview a neutral third party in the colo industry who can explain the distinction.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#54

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 deposi…

"your deposits are FDIC insured" claim was a lie, for anyone building on top of Synapse

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#55

> 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. Apparently you didn't find them important enough to have backups. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in net income and they couldn't afford a cheap NAS with 4 disks. Incredible.

I don't understand why you were downvoted. There is no excuse for them to not have local copies. In the context of video production 55TB is nothing. They must have local storage that's significantly larger than that already.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#56
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A non-profit in a deeply unfair situation tugs at the heartstrings.

What is unfair? It seems completely normal and what courts are for sorting out. Iron mountain is acting exactly how I would want them to if they were storing data for me. If you are wharehousing data, you dont just let your customer's customer come in, look around, and take whatever they want. Even if they have a sob story. You ask for a court order with specifics.

How about before the company went out of business? Wasn’t there an avenue for the CEO to send a letter to Iron Mountain mapping the data and its owners or make an arrangement to legally transfer the data or something?

It's unfair when you do the best you can and suddenly you have to talk to lawyers.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#57

> 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. Apparently you didn't find them important enough to have backups. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in net income and they couldn't afford a cheap NAS with 4 disks. Incredible.

They did, they contracted with a vendor to store and backup the data. If that is insufficient then just about every customer of AWS, Azure, GCP, OCP, and every other managed storage provider is guilty of the same sin.

A single vendor to handle the primary storage and all backups is insufficient for your most critical data.

But where are you seeing this vendor was tasked with backups? This looks like a single copy situation.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the laws and regulations are unclear? This seems to be following the completely standard and expected process. Contractor goes belly up, so you go to court and a judge who confirms they were a custodian of your data and you are entitled to retreive it. Same would be the case if I was leasing equipment to someone and they had it at a storage lot. If the middle party dies or goes bankrupt, I get a cour…

It’s already been months in this case. And, court cases often take many years to resolve. The issue is more that the court is slow and expensive even in the best case.

Its been 3 weeks, and they got what they need from the courts.

> The St. Louis station sued the information management company July 28

How much do you think it cost? A few grand?

Maybe we could replace this by reinventing the wheel, but i dont think it would be better. We could put it on blockchain and let a Peter Theil company handle arbitration.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#59
post #47

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.

Iron Mountain probably only knows what data was owned by Open Source Storage, but not on the level of which data belongs to which Open Source Storage customer.

If so, it would be incredibly reckless for Iron Mountain to provide all of the data stored by Open Source Storage to one of Open Source Storage's former customers (PBS). Presumably that is why they wanted to go through the legal process so that someone else would be vested with the legal authority to determine what data PBS can legally access.

Re: Judge sets framework for Nine PBS to retrieve archival data

#60
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is unfair? It seems completely normal and what courts are for sorting out. Iron mountain is acting exactly how I would want them to if they were storing data for me. If you are wharehousing data, you dont just let your customer's customer come in, look around, and take whatever they want. Even if they have a sob story. You ask for a court order with specifics.

How about before the company went out of business? Wasn’t there an avenue for the CEO to send a letter to Iron Mountain mapping the data and its owners or make an arrangement to legally transfer the data or something? It's unfair when you do the best you can and suddenly you have to talk to lawyers.

The middleman fucked PBS, but everyone else is doing the reasonable job provided the lemons they have been given. It doesn't have to be a big deal.
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