WeR1 World Network, the show's creator, is suing the ISP, CyberLynk of Franklin, Wisconsin, and its former employee, Michael Jewson, for damages, saying CyberLynk should have done a better job of protecting its data.

The problems started in February 2009 when CyberLynk terminated Jewson's employment for an undisclosed reason. One month later, on March 26, Jewson allegedly logged back into his former employer's systems and went on a data-wiping rampage.

The lost data included an entire season of "Zodiac Island" -- 6,480 files -- that was stored on a CyberLynk FTP server. The show's producers had been using the server for nearly a year as a drop box where contributors from the U.S., Manila, Beijing and Hong Kong could collaborate on episodes.

CyberLynk was supposed to have backed up the data, but CEO Adam Hobach told WeR1 that his company's backup procedure "had failed and/or was not properly instituted," WeR1 said in a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii.

"This was an accumulation of two years of work that included animation artwork and live action video production, with contributions from several hundred people and over three dozen companies in the United States and Asia," WeR1 said in the filing.