If your server/system uptime is business critical then you can and should have the systems in place on your end to tell whether you're up or not. It's not in your best interests to give these people business.
I used to run a small site, www.?bm.com, which got nailed by 100s of bozos running "monitoring" packages, all of which we blocked. We had a tripwire like tool that warned us if someone was hitting the servers too hard. If you exceeded some periodic limit you got automatically blocked. Didn't matter whether you were intentionally attacking the site or not, our assumption was that you were.
It's your systems, your resources, your business, not theirs.
No, online donations are covered by the Ziarno patent (see http://philanthropy.com/free/articles/v12/i09/0900 3301.htm and http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =14&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=pall&s1=ziarno.INZZ.&OS=IN/ ziarno&RS=IN/ziarno).
home.com is rejecting inbound email with the message "This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason: The user(s) account is disabled." (and yes, the account was receiving mail throughout 11/30).
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If your server/system uptime is business critical then you can and should have the systems in place on your end to tell whether you're up or not. It's not in your best interests to give these people business.
I used to run a small site, www.?bm.com, which got nailed by 100s of bozos running "monitoring" packages, all of which we blocked. We had a tripwire like tool that warned us if someone was hitting the servers too hard. If you exceeded some periodic limit you got automatically blocked. Didn't matter whether you were intentionally attacking the site or not, our assumption was that you were.
It's your systems, your resources, your business, not theirs.
You get what you paid for.
No, online donations are covered by the Ziarno patent (see http://philanthropy.com/free/articles/v12/i09/0900 3301.htm and http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =14&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=pall&s1=ziarno.INZZ.&OS=IN/ ziarno&RS=IN/ziarno).
According to this cnet story, the judge ruled that the ADA doesn't apply to the web. The full opinion can be read here (pdf).
home.com is rejecting inbound email with the message "This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason: The user(s) account is disabled." (and yes, the account was receiving mail throughout 11/30).