Students are given the option of buying the print magazine though - I think they just need to extend this policy to everyone, rather than making it a print or nothing affair.
The novelty of getting science in the mail will fade. I am now completely addicted to Mendeley: I have it on my ipad, iphone, mac, and windows box at work.
The problem with dead trees is retrieving that article you read 7 years ago becomes a real bear. What journal was it in? Something about venules and tylenol .... crap. Mendeley is like having Gmail for your journal articles. Even the highlighting and notes are in the cloud. Love it.
So are you suggesting that I should have to print it out because people shouldn't be forced to pay for it? Or because I'm using some dead trees? Because if it's the second, there about a million more useful places you could recommend people cut down consumption, than on my monthly magazine with about 100 pages, that, again, I pay for.
Most of the CACM articles were technically weak or about subjects I had no interest in. I would have been happy to not receive it (better, get some other SIG newsletter instead).
In the era of digital distribution, I just print out the stuff I want on dead trees and leave the rest as bits.
The rest of the articles tend to be pretty solid too; there's very little IT drivel or academic navel-gazing left. It probably doesn't hurt to have some awareness of what's going on in academia even for those of us who work in industry anyway.
Not that any of this really refutes your main point that digital distribution is inherently more personalizable.
2. You aren't paying for all the externalities associated with your choices, so I wouldn't be so sure you are truly paying for your 100 odd pages. Maybe you could look into a KindleDX or something similar for your mobile reading pleasure?