Fly by night hosts take people's money and then close up shop later...hurting the industry. How do you feel about the idea of having some sort of web hosting consortium and/or certification for web hosting companies?

Obviously the hosts have to really get something out of it for it to be valuable, and the public needs to know about it.....both fairly expensive propositions.

Just curious on other's thoughts....

I think that the business will get mature naturaly and eventualy the bad hosts will be out of the game.

So who does the ceritification?

Who decided what criteria?

Who sets the price? (there's always a price to be certified in anything!)

While not a bad idea conceptually, you would need some independent authority (not government) to set this up and adiminster it. I fear that mainly only the very big hosts will get certified. There are a great many smaller hosts that provide good service but can't afford the cost of certification and probably wouldn't qualify for certification anyway.

I think that the root of the problem is the knowledge of the end users, which most of the cases are shooting for the good price rather than looking for credentials.

I agree the concept could be a valid idea, however I would be less eager to suggest it would be either practical or effective.

First, would it be a crime to run a web hosting company without this certification? That would violate laizze-faire by putting the government in control of the hosting industry even if ONLY by association of a criminal law. I would assume it would have to be on a National level in order to have any form of effect - so it's not the same principle as a county requiring a business license (basically a form of making money).

Second, even though a government body would not be incharge of the "council" once the council is formed it by definition becomes a government in itself and it would be possible for them to use their position to smuther out competitions. Power corrupts.

Third, How exactly would you go about enforcing such a provision when it's almost an impossible task to keep already illegal material off the internet?

The Pros:

It would be a great help for end users to have a web host that has been reviewed by a group and rated - it goes back to a related article I posted on about the "stupidity" of most users. Most people simply don't know enough about networking and servers to make a valid analysis.

It could be a way for web hosting companies to get started if it was an un-biased service. It would help smaller companies say -"hey, look how good we were rated"

------- Personallly
I would definetely support, and actively, a Web Council with the set goals of rating hosts based upon a set of protocols and factors. I think it could be marketed to be an extremely effective form of helping maintain some stability in the hosting industry - however, it would require intensive marketing campaigns and support from other hosts. It would be helpful probably to have a council that reviews new hosts and determines: how well they hold up.

Just some of my views on it. There are a lot of sites that do web site reviews, so I am left to assume that you are meaning a beauracratic body that actually issues a Web Hosting Certificate like a county may issue a business license. I don't feel a force measure would do the job - purely do to the overwhelming numbers of small hosts and the difficulties in locating them.