Oh, but so near in the past were the days that the phone company made more money the more time you spent on a dialed call. They absolutely had an interest in helping you connect and send your message. Phone companies also sold Yellow Page ads.

Print shops typically have a waiver that you own what you're paying them to print and that you're not publishing illegal content. Then they take that content, print it, and send it to you to mail out or otherwise distribute. In extreme cases they can see up front that you're lying, and will refuse the job. However, FedEx Kinkos in most cases is not liable for the speech you pay them to replicate.

"Phone companies and postal services don't directly profit from the contents of conversations, letters, and packages."

Uh, outside of the postal service, they absolutely do. Do you believe your phone company is not selling data about who you call?

They also track websites, etc, you visit when you use their mobile data networks.

Yes, this is entirely true, hence why it is a leaky analogy. And yes, a growing number of people are upset. But the genie can't be put back in the bottle; there will almost certainly be some push back, and possibly some regulation that the, us, techies won't like. But the internet tries very hard to route around issues, be they technical, social, regulatory.

There will always be a dark underbelly because the net was created by, and is used by us humans. You'll never be able to protect everyone. Just like every other protection issue; regulation, light or heavy, comes in waves. Humans, collectively, are notoriously bad at risk management, exigent threats always seem worse and distant ones in the future are always discounted.

Counter: if your phone service was free, but you had to listen to a pre-call ad every time you answer the phone, do you think the phone company is now liable for damages caused by the content of the call?

You mean from all the broken windows from having chucked my phone because of the crappy ads?

They don't profit from the content, they profit from the service of providing the content (ads).

Bloomberg is one that profits from the content.

I think that's a broken comparison.

In both cases, the networks benefit from the fact that data/information/voice/messages are flowing over them.. almost some sort of effect. ;)

I don't think the content is the important part in either case but the fact that the platform is the place to distribute it.