CUNY Academic Commons

Hi Laurie -

Thanks for the follow-up.

Items uploaded to Commons sites - images, PDFs, etc - have the same privacy restrictions as the sites themselves. If a site is visible only to logged-in Commons users, then its uploads will require that users be logged into the Commons as well. The Hypothesis server is not, of course, logged into the Commons, which is why it's unable to access the PDF for the purposes of whatever Hypothesis does.

In theory, it might be possible to modify our file-privacy protection to allow the Hypothesis server to access PDFs and perhaps other kinds of content, regardless of a site's settings. But this is complicated. For one thing, it's the kind of thing you'd want to allow admins to disable - and it should probably be disabled by default - since many/most instances of private sites are private either because the content is genuinely sensitive, or because it's subject to copyright restrictions that make it illegal to share with a third-party like Hypothesis. So this means building some interface with toggles that allow admins to configure, on a per-file or per-site basis, the file protections. See #6322.

Perhaps more importantly, the various techniques we might use for allowing Hypothesis access - IP range whitelisting, checking the Referer header, etc - are brittle and/or subject to being exploited by unauthorized third parties.

As such, I think that for now the only answer is that PDFs that must be scannable by Hypothesis must be stored on non-private sites. In the future, if this becomes a widespread problem or a frequent request, we can revisit whether it's worth the necessary effort and risk that go into building a more robust system.

Hi Boone,

Thanks for looking into this and for your explanation of issues allowing hypothesis server access on the commons and private sites. I will advise faculty on these issues and suggest they use a public site if they are planning to use the hypothesis plugin.

Thanks again & happy new year

Boone Gorges wrote:

Hi Laurie -

Thanks for the follow-up.

Items uploaded to Commons sites - images, PDFs, etc - have the same privacy restrictions as the sites themselves. If a site is visible only to logged-in Commons users, then its uploads will require that users be logged into the Commons as well. The Hypothesis server is not, of course, logged into the Commons, which is why it's unable to access the PDF for the purposes of whatever Hypothesis does.

In theory, it might be possible to modify our file-privacy protection to allow the Hypothesis server to access PDFs and perhaps other kinds of content, regardless of a site's settings. But this is complicated. For one thing, it's the kind of thing you'd want to allow admins to disable - and it should probably be disabled by default - since many/most instances of private sites are private either because the content is genuinely sensitive, or because it's subject to copyright restrictions that make it illegal to share with a third-party like Hypothesis. So this means building some interface with toggles that allow admins to configure, on a per-file or per-site basis, the file protections. See #6322.

Perhaps more importantly, the various techniques we might use for allowing Hypothesis access - IP range whitelisting, checking the Referer header, etc - are brittle and/or subject to being exploited by unauthorized third parties.

As such, I think that for now the only answer is that PDFs that must be scannable by Hypothesis must be stored on non-private sites. In the future, if this becomes a widespread problem or a frequent request, we can revisit whether it's worth the necessary effort and risk that go into building a more robust system.