Being long inventory offset by puts lasting longer than 5 days would probably work for a very short while. Notwithstanding the fact that they would cost a lot of $ to maintain, it would still IMHO run contrary to the spirit of this interpretive letter which is that the SEC seeks to end the practice of shorting on downticks thru the use of riskless long positions. It was a gray area before..now no more.
Seems like for short oriented traders, the alternative would be to migrate to NAZ since from what I've heard it is easier to get a short off than listeds.