A Bleak Future For Physical Media Purchases?

[wraggster]

The folks at ZDNet are eulogising over the upcoming death of physical media music sales. They refer to the noticeable drop in physical sales of albums whilst digital sales continue climbing (albeit at a reduced rate). Their central argument is that 'the music industry was pillaged by piracy and competition from other forms of entertainment such as video games ... [2007] marked the lowest tally and the steepest decline since Nielsen began publishing estimates based on point-of-sales data in 1993, a Nielsen representative said. The peak year in that time was 2000, when sales reached 785 million units.'

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/05/2142214

[bah]

If I'm paying for a film, game, music or whatever then I damn well want my physical copy.

At the very least, the digitally distributed copy must be free of any DRM so in 10+ years when the company that made it is gone I still have a way of accessing that info.

Online authentication is almost as bad, with a good company like ID you know they'll release a patch that ditches the copy protection/authentication once the game has been out for a fair while (and then later on source to boot!), but are all companies so respectful of consumers?