They contacted the company after being shut down. Not before, when it should have been pretty clear to them how many resources they were using. There's a simple indicator in the dashboard. "BANDWIDTH SAVED".

This line in the article "I tried to monetize it through ads some time ago, but failed. Advertising-Networks don't want us as a customer, but I'm fine with that." was not conclusive that monetization failed via other means. Not a user of the site, but at first glance some choice links to pr0n affiliate sites would do the trick.

Throwaway ey... hmmm.