That's it in a nutshell. At some point, they're going to have to declare themselves as either a content provider or a common carrier. They can't sit on the fence forever.
Them wanting it both ways is as hypocritical as media producers who are always claiming you don’t own your copy of the music or even the media, you just bought a license to play it, so not like buying a book for example. Except when someone sues them because the media (tape, probably?) wears out and they sue the label to send them a new copy of the tape, because after all, they own the license and not the tape, THEN the labels actually argued in court that the buyer owns the media and has the liability if it wears out. D’oh!
Or people willing to do work on a hourly/T&M basis or on a fixed price basis, and the customer says they want to do T&M, but with a fixed price cap! (So they get the benefit if the costs end up low, but the seller assumes the risk if it goes high)