I feel confident that no system exposed to the internet should have a problem with 50,000 requests per month! If they do, they probably shouldn't run a public NTP server, or have a public IP address at all.
I think this line of reasoning doesn't make any sense. The internet is not an inherently safe network regardless of what we wish for; we can't wish away the bad activity, and it's only going to increase. The activity that helps prevent the bad activity from working is a net positive.
I think it's pretty disingenuous to compare viewing a couple of pages once a day with running scripting tools against over 400 websites.
> I think this line of reasoning doesn't make any sense. The internet is not an inherently safe network regardless of what we wish for; we can't wish away the bad activity, and it's only going to increase. The activity that helps prevent the bad activity from working is a net positive.
Oh good, no one has ever claimed "it's for your own good" when doing something selfish without consent.
As the OP said, they don't do anything when the server isn't vulnerable, and serving a 404 page is incredibly cheap.