pdf files return 404

[tomkp]

All pdf files uploaded with surge are returning 404 errors.

I've uploaded a pdf, txt and a docx file to the following domain:

http://smoggy-knife.surge.sh/

The txt and docx are fine, but the pdf gives me a 404.

[sintaxi]

We recently had an astronomical amount of abuse on surge from people publishing hundreds of GB of copy written PDFs. The results of which was a flood of DMCA complaints. If you have a pdf that you need to publish on surge we can whitelist your domain. You will just need to send us a link to your project.

[rhythmus]

So sad to learn Surge.sh got targeted by abusers! That’s why we can’t have nice things…

I came here after googling "surge.sh pdf". It puzzled me why the pdfs in my site’s source dir, deployed using the $ surge CLI, didn’t get served, as was previously the (expected) case. No warnings, no logs in the CLI; everything seemed okay, the CDN propagation and all. Requests for pdfs just returned 404s. So I looked into .surgeignore, and wondered whether the default behavior got changed. Apparently, so it did…

PDFs are very important to me — I’d even claim they’re an integral part of the Web; still the better option to @media print. I regularly publish nicely styled, printable pdfs alongside my html, for my readers’s convenience. I also prefer lightweight pdfs as the format of choice when it comes to delivering presentations/powerpoints. (As a matter of fact, last week I needed an online slide deck for a lecture and was lost at why I couldn’t use Surge.sh any longer.) Needless to say, in all such use cases it is obvious the publisher of the pdf is also its copyright holder.

I find it a shame the delivery format (pdf) is the victim of copyright infringement. Abusers will always find other ways: they could wrap pirated content in .zip, .rar, multipage .tiff, .ps files, and what have you — even in html itself, in base64 encoded URIs or whatever. tl;dr: you cannot ban delivery formats to mitigate file sharing abuse. There should be other means.

Don’t get me wrong here: I love Surge, I do feel with your DMCA harassment torment, and I totally understand why you decided simply banning pdfs in batch was the short cut solution to what must have been a disenchanting woe. But may I suggest an alternative approach?

Maybe you could allow PDFs for sites hosted on Surge, but with a custom domain, i.e. those with a CNAME file in their source, pointing to a domain owned by someone else (the publisher) than you guys. After all, legally, it is the domain owner (as on WHOIS record) who is liable for press offenses and copyright infringements, not the hosting provider. Also, the automated DMCA take-down requests would first go to the spammers/abusers/piraters. Who’d have to buy a domain first, setup the DNS records, before they could abuse the free tier of Surge hosting — I guess they’d move on very quickly…

Sorry for my ramblings. As I said, I love Surge, but am just desperate about hosting my pdfs. I hope you can work out a solution.

Meanwhile, please whitelist my domain, which is dodecaglotta.com.

Thanks a lot!

[sintaxi]

@rhythmus your account has been whitelisted.

[siamkreative]

@sintaxi Could you please whitelist siamkreative.com? I temporarily changed the link to my resume.

[karel-brinda]

@sintaxi Could you whitelist tp-zpevnik.surge.sh, please?

[killerkiara]

Hi @sintaxi and thanks for the explanations :) I needed to update my CV on my website and suddenly i could not figure out why it would return me a 404. Could you please whitelist my domain as well? It is chiara.codes. Thanks a lot!

[eigenmannmartin]

Hi @sintaxi yould you please whitelist eigenmannmartin.ch/ as well? Thanks a lot!

[mike1808]

@sintaxi I hope you can whitelist my domain mmanukyan.io

[vitordino]

@sintaxi i need mine too vitordino.surge.sh

[cowgirl-coding]

@sintaxi I need my site whitelisted as well. kevinwaddle.com. A little explanation instead of a flat 404 would have been helpful. That was a major wtf moment.

[JesseSoldat]

@sintaxi Could you whitelist https://jesse-soldat.surge.sh

[juandjara]

Hello @sintaxi

Could you pls whitelist [https://fuken.xyz/CV-juandjara.pdf]() ?? That's my resume on my personal webpage

[paulcpederson]

@sintaxi when you get a moment, could you also whitelist paulcpederson.com ? Storing my resume in pdf format on there. Also, thanks for surge! Really amazing project...

[AndreaCensi]

@sintaxi Could you whitelist http://robot-design.org/ ?

(p.s. this policy really needs to be in the documentation)

[gaelmaiano]

Hi @sintaxi Could you whitelist http://gael.maiano.fr ? The pdf is my cv. Thanks

[EliotSlevin]

Hi @sintaxi

Could you please whitelist simulating-psychedelic-therapy.surge.sh, and barnett.surge.sh? My friend and I are using surge to host our thesis's, and we need to load two small PDF files.

Thanks heaps :)

[nkandrewz]

@sintaxi Could you please whitelist http://decalscentral.com ?

[markpinero]

@sintaxi could you please whitelist http://markpinero.com? Thank you!

[axbwh]

@sintaxi Hi, I would really appreciate it if you could white list dww.surge.sh, got a few pdf infographics that need to be published on the site. Cheers.

[sureshbala]

@sintaxi Please whitelist the website https://universaltechnoschool.com/ This is the website of a school and they would like to distribute School Brochure and Application Form

[wesleyllewis]

@sintaxi Could you please whitelist www.wesleylewis.us? Trying to host my CV. Thanks in advance!

[jasonkuhrt]

I got burnt by this silently, I guess my resume has been 404 for a few months now. Can you please whitelist http://jasonkuhrt.com. Thanks!

[joshwilcken]

@sintaxi please whitelist http://joshwilcken-portfolio.surge.sh/ I am attempting to whitelist my portfolio site.

[cotyembry]

@sintaxi can you please whitelist http://http://sovereignchickamaugacherokee.org/ I am needing to keep an application for hosted and available for the website. Thank you!

[cotyembry]

The way I worked around this issue while waiting for my domain to be whitelisted was to: #1 use github, #2 use an iframe in my site. I chose to embed an iframe in my page to make the domain/url to the user stay my domain name, then set the src of the iframe to be what the url is for the resource on github.com. To get the url, navigate to the file on github.com after logging and selecting your git project. Once in the git project, navigate to the file and you click view raw. Copy that url. The issue is, the raw view of the file isn't allow to be executed so the browser will just download the file. I.e. the raw url of a resource would look like: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yourGITUsername/gitProjectName/master/asset/application_final.pdf

A trick, however, is to change the url to be the following instead:

`https://rawgit.com/yourGITUsername/gitProjectName/master/assets/application_final.pdf`

to allow the browser to correctly use the file type.

I hope this helps

[shahidcodes]

could you please whitelist my domain http://resume.shahidkamal.surge.sh

[plugnburn]

@sintaxi Please whitelist nihilcoin.surge.sh, the only PDF that needs to be published there is our group's manifesto.

[micahjz]

@sintaxi Hi, can you please whitelist my domain at www.micahzirn.com. I would like to include my résumé. Thanks!

[organnoise]

Hi could you please whitelist danielmcn.com?

Some of my images also won't upload for some reason, are there rules about certain images being uploaded too?

[justinkan9]

I like many others, have a resume pdf file :) would love to get it whitelisted:

justinkang.surge.sh

[EliotSlevin]

I hope it's becoming apparent we need a more sustainable pdf system than requesting to be on a whitelist - how about a limit to the amount of pdfs you can upload on a free plan?

On Wed, 23 Aug 2017, 5:31 pm Justin S Kang notifications@github.com wrote:

I like many others, have a resume pdf file :) would love to get it whitelisted:

justinkang.surge.sh

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/sintaxi/surge/issues/257#issuecomment-324225468, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AEwZvr3Yfz-mBBN50uIcmKyINmw6nbHVks5sa7k3gaJpZM4Mh41i .

[winstonlan]

Could you whitelist my domain! winstonlan.me

[woHangOnAMinute]

us too!!! www.grabthegoanna.com.au www.grabthegoanna.surge.sh

[miottid]

Same here, could you whitelist us: cocotte-app.com Thanks

[ran-research-lab]

Could you pls whitelist 3033.surge.sh. I use it for my programming course. Thanks

[audols]

Hi could you whitelist audreyhsuolson.com? Trying to upload a PDF of my resume.

Thanks in advance!

[sintaxi]

Hey folks, we're working on a better long term solution for this problem as suggested by @EliotSlevin. until then DM your surge email address to @surge_sh to get whitelisted.

[justinkan9]

@sintaxi

Hey, I don't have twitter, but hope you see this to whitelist me 👍

justinkan9@yahoo.com

[lmflatt]

Hey @sintaxi It seems like this is the place to get whitelisted for pdfs. Would you be able to add anthonybernarducci.surge.sh ? It's a site for a friend, and he just has a few scholarly publications to show off. My email is lee.m.flatt@gmail.com

[Chisnits]

DM'd on twitter but really trying to get whitelisted ASAP. my url is chasederr.surge.sh. my email is chasederr@gmail.com. Please let me know if anything can be done. @sintaxi

[mqklin]

@sintaxi DM'd on twitter as well, but no response. Please, whitelist zerion.io and dev.zerion.io. Thank you.

[sintaxi]

OK. I think you all have been added now.

[mqklin]

Thanks a lot!

[jasonkuhrt]

@sintaxi Not for me:

❯ curl -vs --insecure https://jasonkuhrt.com/resume.pdf
*   Trying 138.197.235.123...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to jasonkuhrt.com (138.197.235.123) port 443 (#0)
* WARNING: disabling hostname validation also disables SNI.
* TLS 1.2 connection using TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
* Server certificate: *.surge.sh
* Server certificate: COMODO RSA Domain Validation Secure Server CA
* Server certificate: COMODO RSA Certification Authority
> GET /resume.pdf HTTP/1.1
> Host: jasonkuhrt.com
> User-Agent: curl/7.54.0
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
< Server: SurgeCDN/1.1.0
< Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2017 16:58:16 GMT
< Connection: close
< Content-Length: 0
<
* Closing connection 0

[edwinbsmith]

Can I get my domain, http://edwinsmith.org/, whitelisted? Thanks!

[eddycaldas]

@sintaxi would you whitelist my site please: https://eddycaldas.surge.sh/ Thank you much @sintaxi

[ntucakovic]

So sad for abusing such a great tool :(

I've spent hours debugging what might be happening with PDF, thought it was React route bug, never realized that it might be due to host issues... Can you please document it somewhere?

Also, if you can whitelist domains https://ntucakovic.surge.sh & www.ntmedia.me ? I have cloudflare behind ntmedia.me, so even less bandwidth will be spent for downloading that PDF.

Thank you!

[oddmouse]

@sintaxi Would you mind adding lindy.co to the PDF whitelist as well? Thank you!

[alluster]

@sintaxi Hey if you don't mind adding abbvie.surge.sh to the PDF whitelist also it would be great! Thank you!

[jessehattabaugh]

@sintaxi please add consciousfreedom.net to the PDF whitelist