Fired employee wipes out whole season of TV show

Re:Fired employee wipes out whole season of TV show by mbreese on Friday April 01, 2011 @12:49AM (#2394985)

The thing that really sucks for the TV show is that it wasn't even their own employee. It was an employee for their data hosting company. You know... the guys who you're supposed to outsource to to make sure that this stuff doesn't happen.

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Re:Fired employee wipes out whole season of TV show by jrockway on Friday April 01, 2011 @01:44AM (#2395121)

You know... the guys who you're supposed to outsource to to make sure that this stuff doesn't happen.

Actually, outsourcing is designed to be cheap, not to lower risk. Trusting the lowest bidder to an important task usually results in disappointment.

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Re:Fired employee wipes out whole season of TV show by pero on Friday April 01, 2011 @02:50AM (#2395247)

Actually, big corporations outsource to transfer risk and not because it's cheap. To compliance/legal departments, paying exorbitant fees to qualified vendors is saving money in their risk analyses.

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Re:Fired employee wipes out whole season of TV show by mbreese on Friday April 01, 2011 @04:17AM (#2395443)

Exactly. If you don't have expertise in house, then it can be cheaper to hire that task out to an outside company rather than hire someone to manage it in house. This sure sucks for the TV show, but at least they have someone else to hold accountable. If this had happened and they handled their own IT, there wouldn't be anyone but themselves to hold accountable. And you can bet that means a lawsuit with damages.

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Re:Fired employee wipes out whole season of TV show by jrockway on Friday April 01, 2011 @12:48PM (#2396944)

But of course, if the hosting company had any lawyers, their contract says they're not liable for this.

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Re:Fired employee wipes out whole season of TV show by pero on Friday April 01, 2011 @04:28PM (#2397896)

How so? They were negligent. Beyond that, you're also assuming the client didn't have lawyers--there's no way this contract gets signed off on without the vendor absorbing the risk.

If all the legal work was done properly, the vendor would end up in court with their insurer.

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Re:Fired employee wipes out whole season of TV show by gm on Friday April 01, 2011 @09:08AM (#2396014)

Yeah, well you see how well it worked out in this instance. They transferred risk to a party incapable of mitigating that risk.

I think maybe the TV producer's lawyers think that suing the internet host into oblivion will get their TV show back?

If this was indeed a risk transfer outsourcing agreement, everyone who was involved in vetting and approving the hosting contract should be fired and possibly sued for negligence.

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Re:Fired employee wipes out whole season of TV show by d2 on Friday April 01, 2011 @01:06AM (#2395028)

You mean The Cloud has disgruntled employees?

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Re:Fired employee wipes out whole season of TV show by derrida on Friday April 01, 2011 @02:47AM (#2395241)

Idea: Outsource disgruntled employees to the cloud. Hit the cloud and money can come out of it.... sort of like Mario.

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Re:Fired employee wipes out whole season of TV show by iwwr on Friday April 01, 2011 @09:02AM (#2395998)

Hit the cloud and money can come out of it

You mean like a pinata?

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Re:Fired employee wipes out whole season of TV show by gm on Friday April 01, 2011 @09:04AM (#2396005)

Unless "back up our data" is part of the hosting contract, the host is off the hook.

There's up to two fools here:

- If the hosting company does not have a disclaimer in their contract that the data backup onus is not on them, then they deserve to be sued for all they got.

- The TV producer should keep their own backup. Trusting a third party blindly with your most precious data is simply stupid, and unworthy of anyone involved with IT in this day and age. I would back up data even if the host did have a contractual obligation to back up my data. Shit happens, it's not a matter of "if", but of "when".

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