Crunchyroll was first founded in 2006 and was initially a for-profit video upload and streaming site that specialized in hosting East Asian content. Some of the content hosted on Crunchyroll included versions of East Asian shows that had been subtitled by fans.
Maybe, but i don't think so. Iirc, their whole appeal from the beginning was they were trying to start the first above the board legit US anime streaming site. I'm pretty sure they raised money to license small shows and were the first to do simulcast eng subs for a couple of them. I remember watching Giant Killing and a bunch of niche shows when they first started out.
Didn't crunchyroll start out as a pirate site?
From wikipedia:
You could say the same about youtube, tbh.
I mean fans subs uploaded by fans and without license i would qualify as piracy.
Maybe, but i don't think so. Iirc, their whole appeal from the beginning was they were trying to start the first above the board legit US anime streaming site. I'm pretty sure they raised money to license small shows and were the first to do simulcast eng subs for a couple of them. I remember watching Giant Killing and a bunch of niche shows when they first started out.
I only know people I know who were into anome were watching pirate subs on crunchyroll back in the day.
Hmm, looks like it started as a video sharing site / forum and then pivoted towards legit stuff between 2008 and 2009.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090804181402/http://www.crunchyroll.com/