They don't have the usual responsibilities of property owners, though, like a requirement that you maintain sufficient control over your property to prevent it from being used for activities that are illegal or a nuisance.
In telecommunications, common carrier status was a trade: if a telecom treats their network as neutral infrastructure, not discriminating between customers or exercising control over the data that passes over it, they'll be indemnified from legal responsibility for the data that passes over it.
ISPs are attempting to get (and have largely gotten) one half of that understanding without the other half. They want the legal indemnification of common carrier status without the requirements of neutrality that it entails. (The various "safe-harbor" laws passed over the past 20 years, with no strings attached, largely give them that.)
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They don't have the usual responsibilities of property owners, though, like a requirement that you maintain sufficient control over your property to prevent it from being used for activities that are illegal or a nuisance.
In telecommunications, common carrier status was a trade: if a telecom treats their network as neutral infrastructure, not discriminating between customers or exercising control over the data that passes over it, they'll be indemnified from legal responsibility for the data that passes over it.
ISPs are attempting to get (and have largely gotten) one half of that understanding without the other half. They want the legal indemnification of common carrier status without the requirements of neutrality that it entails. (The various "safe-harbor" laws passed over the past 20 years, with no strings attached, largely give them that.)