You've clearly never done business with a lawyer. This has been in court multiple times. Even with a fast, simple case that doesn't happen without breaking six figures. Not by a lot, if Iron Mountain doesn't fight it, but $100k+ is about typical for anything that actually goes to trial. That's without any appeals.

Are you saying that's a good thing or a bad thing?

Cuz people will argue both ways on that.

Not even that, I think. They're supposed to pay Iron Mountain what OSS would have paid them. One presumes there was some markup on it. Which should at least somewhat offset those legal fees.

(There's also whatever they're paying the former OSS employee for recovery services, which never come cheap.)

If I'm reading this right, OSS doesn't exist any more. So Nine PBS isn't paying them anything, they're paying for data recovery services. Unfortunately that they need to, but that's what happens when companies go bankrup.

Sucks to be you, son. The modern world could not possibly exist without corporations as they exist now. Don't like the corporate shield? Walk everywhere, because automobile companies and the petrochemical companies cannot exist without it. Grow your own food, because the entire agricultural industry and the trucking industry that brings good to your local supermarket cannot exist without it. Grow your own cotton and weave your own clothes, or go naked, because that's another industry that can't exist without it.

Our current civilization cannot exist without it.

And you know it, you just like to masturbate over hurting people who are more successful than you are.

The judge has already ruled that the data does not belong to OSS, it belongs to Nine PBS. The tech has no business or legal relationship in this to OSS or anyone involved with it, they are working for Nine PBS. So long as they act in good faith, I believe that will cover it.

Things like 911 systems, paid for with public money, do not happen without extensive written records of who did what. Because without that, there's no equipment to install because there's no money to buy it. And tampering with that system results in prison sentences. Not as often as it should, but it certainly happens.

There are already 911 systems using AI. The trend will accelerate quickly, until there's enough of a death toll to get some politicians unelected.

So, they can't afford a few grand for proper backups, but they can afford six (or seven) figures in legal fees?

That probably makes sense to them.

We're witnessing how it works, with a single copy of critical backups in the hands of a third party that is now defunct. Which is to say, it works . . . poorly.

The legal fees to get a usable copy of their backups is going to cost them orders of magnitude more than keeping proper backups would have. But apparently, their main plan was to use cinnamon flavored unicorn farts for backups.

What an idiotic thing to say. No one with any real IT experience could possibly keep a straight face if you said that to them.

Having a local backup is part of the 3-2-1 process that is proven, for decades, to be the right way. If your IT people don't keep multiple backups in at least two separate locations, they're incompetent and shouldn't be trusted with a pencil sharpener.

Having one backup of critical data in the hands of a third party is a single point of failure that isn't under your control.

Yeah, the cloud service is at fault for their failure, but whoever at the station who decided on a single point of failure is far, far more at fault for making a stupid, incompetent, lazy decision to rely on something that any competent IT person would (and probably did) tell them isn't, and inherently can't be reliable enough for the task.

Contracts only help if both parties still exist. If one doesn't, it gets complicated, with many lawyers involved.

And only damn fool only has one copy of important data.

If he's not careful, the only conversation he's going to start is who knocks the soap out of his hand in the shower, and who gets to stand behind him when he bends over to pick it up.

At best, it would count as ex-parte communications, which isn't as serious as bribery, but is grounds for sanctions.

If, that is, the court used AI for anything, which they apparently do not.

In reality, it was childish and stupid, but the guy is representing himself, so childish and stupid is a given.

Don't taunt the sock puppet. He has sex with himself all the time. And I mean, literally, all the time.