It's not illegal. It's just expensive.

There's a difference between illegal and expensive, but that distinction seems lost on most media outlets, who seem determined to characterize the Supreme Court's decision yesterday in the Areo case as holding that Aereo's business is illegal (for samples, see here, and here, and here, and here, or just search "Aereo" and "illegal").

So let's be clear:  the Supreme Court didn't say that Aereo's business is illegal.  It said that Aereo is violating copyrights.  If they want to pay licensing fees (like cable operators do) they can keep right on going.  The problem is that their business model is probably not financially sustainable if they do that - their subscribers are undoubtedly mostly former cable/FIOS/satellite subscribers who ditched their previous provider(s) because of their high fees and crappy customer service.  Those folks don't pay Aereo enough money now to defray the licensing fees that Aereo would have to pay to stay in business, and if Aereo did pay the licensing fees and pass that cost through to subscribers, their subscribers will lose their main motivation for ditching their traditional content providers.

But it's not illegal.