John writes:
In the US, ISPs are not, and never have been viewed, as common carriers.
I recall a case involving CompuServe in which it was treated at least partially as a common carrier, not responsible for the content of its network.
The Compuserve case went the general way you suggest, and the Prodigy case went the other way. Both cases predate the passage of 47 U.S.C. Section 230, which was a part of the Communicaitons Decency Act, which in turn was a part of the Telecommuncations Act of 1996. Section 230 was enacted specifically to reverse the holding of the Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy decision, which did impose liability on Prodigy.
> (1) Treatment of publisher or speakerNo provider or user of an interactive computer service [read, an ISP] shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
How is this reconciled with the DMCA?
The DMCA does not in general make ISPs liable for copyright infringement by their customers, but instead puts certain takedown obligations on ISPs. So there is no conflict.
John