In the not too distant future, not only the software but the hardware may be downloaded from the internet.
Certainly, special devices will be needed for that, and not all hardware download will be possible.
But as our views about matter and information converge (I mean, modern philosophy considers everything basically energy plus information and we gradually distinguish them less and less), we understand that information determines how things look like and behave, hence if we have unlimited acess to elements, and we are able to scan an object at the atomic level, we can theoretically place components in the correct position to replicate the original object.
We will need a special "printer" or nanoreplicator, which can bee fed by not colour ink components but "element-ink" cartridges, compunds can be assembled from those finy-tiny corpuscules at a much finer resolution than is available in contemporary bubblejet printers and all parts can be put together as if a Lego object was built.
Theoretically this is not pure science fiction.
Richard Feynman, the Nobel laureate physicist said over 50 years ago that such atomic scale assemblers would be possible in the future and Don Eigler, IBM Fellow has already demonstrated that technology can intentionally place atoms to their predefined places.
Therefore, if one structure can be built (the original object representing that), transferring the 3D scanned information to the nanoreplicator will help duplicate an object.
Now it seems fancy, funny fantasy. In a couple of decades our grandchildren will download mugs, T-shirts, glasses, mobile phones, guitars, chairs etc. on a daily basis.
They enter cyberspace, fly to the mall-store-space they want, and if they want to buy some gadget, easily grab them to the floating "Download" basket, get charged and... the thing plumps in their real-world hands.
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