From a technical perspective, as orders are sent to the exchange, NYSE sends them out on a direct line to subscribers who listen to that feed. This is not private information, but it is relatively expensive, given you'd need to have servers at a colo, and pay for fast networking, boxes, software, etc.
They also then aggregate that data and send them out on a feed to the NBBO which is much more accessible to the majority of traders. Obviously, it is somewhat delayed, as they need to aggregate, and a firm that can aggregate the data faster than NYSE thereby has an advantage. This aggregated data gets set out as soon as possible, and NBBO defines a time range that they need to be accurate. For what its worth, NBBO means "National Best Bid and Offer" and they will aggregate bids and offers from all exchanges and provide the best one in a single consolidated feed.
Nanex determined that at certain times during high volume, Nasdaq's aggregate feed was delayed by up to 30 seconds, and this was cause by certain entities quote stuffing (which like I said earlier, is against the rules).
That is all that was determined. There is nothing about trading on private information (which there is none here) or front-running (which HFT firms can't do) or any of the other nonsense that gets spewed out.
If anything, other firms with good infrastructure would have been able to arb out the inefficiency and make the markets right again, quickly.