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Comment by ApolloFortyNine | Hacker News Reader

> Iron Mountain initially agreed to turn over Nine PBS’ data, but it eventually backtracked and claimed that OSS owned the data it stored. Because of this, Nine PBS now has no choice but to sue Iron Mountain, too, to ensure the data is not deleted.

This does make sense. I'm guessing the first request some rep just went sure its you're data why not, but in reality, it's OSS's data, and you paid OSS to store it. It's also likely encrypted in someway.

TLDR still, is especially when it's a reasonable amount of data, just have more than 1 backup.

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I store my belongings with a storage company. They rent facilities from a property owner. The storage company goes under while my stuff is still in the storage unit. I go to the property owner and say my stuff was in there. They say, no, that's owned by the storage company. Incorrect - the belongings were owned by me the entire time, the storage company was just holding it for me. I need to prove it was mine, but I don't lose property rights just because it's in someone else's possession.

Likewise if I store data with a cloud provider. Sure, Iron Mountain shouldn't just offer it up without proof, but if I give them notice of a legal case they should be sure to hold on to it, and if I win the case they need to hand it over to me. All I need to do is provide proof that I am the rightful owner of those goods.

In the edge case that it wasn't Nine PBS requesting the Nine PBS data, you've now opened your company to a huge can of worms. Only OSS knows who Nine PBS is in their database, hence why, from a liability standpoint, it makes sense to say it's OSS's problem.

Also your storage company case is actually it's own can of worms, see the Lego drama from a couple months ago about that. It seems obvious, but in the eyes of the law there's more paperwork than you'd think.

You know how they say "possession in 9/10s of the law"? I.e., "9/10s of the law is just devoted to figuring out who owns what."

That is to say - I really doubt anything about this is remotely simple or straightforward, but I'm sure it's all lucrative for the lawyers involved.

> I store my belongings with a storage company. They rent facilities from a property owner. The storage company goes under while my stuff is still in the storage unit. I go to the property owner and say my stuff was in there. They say, no, that's owned by the storage company. Incorrect - the belongings were owned by me the entire time, the storage company was just holding it for me. I need to prove it was mine, but I don't lose property rights just because it's in someone else's possession.

You are a subtenant. The tenant went bust. The case law on this is settled. Depending on state, you either have a period of time to vacate the premises or you can/do become a tenant of the property owner. People have been subleasing rooms/apartments for hundreds of years, so every possible scenario you could imagine in this space has been litigated to death.

That is real estate.

American case law about data stored on computers is that whosoever owns that computer owns all the data on that computer. Which is why US privacy law is far weaker than EU privacy law (where you own the data about yourself). I think pets.com was one of the very few exceptions where the TOS said "we won't sell your data" and the bankruptcy liquidator said "it is an asset, we sure will sell it" and the courts said "no you can't sell it".

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