Guess what Crunchyroll used to be. Also as long as a website wasn't/isn't making money directly off the anime (or manga, yes there was also a site that tried that) then creators didn't really care. And if a creator wanted their works down then the sites complied.
At the time pirate sites would ask for donations through paypal or ad clicks. Crunchyroll however did use a subscription scheme and worse they used other groups fansubs , that had a not for profit disclaimer embedded somewhere in the video, as part of their subscription scheme. The crap they pulled almost got the whole fansub community shutdown. Instead of being shut down for good the owner was permitted to 'sell Crunchyroll' and let the site go 'legit' which really pissed people off.
