It seems animesuge.to, anix.to and aniwave.to closed down with the exact same message, though there may be a few other sites that closed down in a similar way.
That text is included in every site that was shut down. All I can do is speculate, but I think the site owners were forced to write that. It's unlikely that every pirate site owner suddenly had a change of heart in regards to piracy.
Probably. Unless they're only using that as a hook where there are still other forces not directly involved in the creative/hosting process that are taking 90% of the profits.
EDIT: just realized you're probably talking about stuff like patreon where you actually just pay the creators, in which case, absolutely! I've got a number of patreons I'm actively supporting
I was planning to finish a series on AnimeSuge and AnimeSuge is now gone. I'm not going to fucking subscribe to Crunchyroll because, they don't have anime classics like Tenchi Universe or Tenchi in Tokyo. AnimeSuge did. They had everything Tenchi in one place whereas you have to subscribe to both Funimation and Cruncyroll to even get a third of the series available.
And watching the original 1997 Berserk series straight through was on AnimeSuge. None of the legal options fucking have it and everyone is selling the series on EBay and Amazon for triple the price.
I don't torrent. I've got no patience for it and the climate to which to torrent in, isn't nearly as rich as it once was in the 2000s. So it's not worth my time.