What I am still wondering is 1) does there remain any possibility to set up such a service so that it could reasonably be called a "long antenna cord" (which part of the Aereo solution violates that?) and 2) does the special nature of broadcast content vis-a-vis public airwaves, etc, have much of an impact on the situation?

This non-lawyer feels that Aereo might have mis-stepped by 1) not going with a tighter "we are a long antenna cable" approach and 2) trying to scare everyone into thinking a ruling against it would somehow stifle mostly unnrelated cloud innovation.