I also don't get the criticism of analogies to older technologies. When faced with applying a statute to new technologies, where the intended application to old technologies is clear but the application to a new one isn't, discussing which older technologies are relevant analogies is a useful way to proceed. In this case it's clear that Congress did not intend the Copyright Act to cover rental of home A/V equipment, but did intend it to cover the 1970s community-antenna systems. So it seems pretty natural to ask: is Aereo's service, in the relevant features, more like CATV or more like equipment rental? The court might've gotten the answer to that wrong, but it seems like the right question to ask. At least, absent Congress actually updating the law to clarify how they want it applied to new technologies. I've read through the opinion and I don't see anything technological to disagree with there. They correctly described how the system operates; the only real disagreement is over whether the Copyright Act was intended to cover a system operating in such a manner.

Now at oral argument they sometimes use pretty out-there analogies, but some of that is trying to probe the limits of what an attorney for one side or the other is arguing. By asking "isn't this like X?" they're often trying to get the lawyer to clarify precisely why it isn't.

>I thought their aereo interpretation was probably on the mark.

I don't think it was, but I certainly don't think it's because they're old and so stupid that they have to understand things by analogy rather than some sort of gnostic osmosis.