my understanding is that the copyright of mindcrack was because scammers were making fake mindcrack servers to steal from ppl and mojang got involved. then the contracts came around bc generikb and rob were doing illegal stuff. ive yet to figure out exactly what it was but guude says he found it problematic enough to bring members under contract to protect the group as a whole. generik and rob left bc of the contracts, etho left bc he didnt want his name to potentially leaked by legal docs, and PSJ left bc he wasnt into that kind of content anymore anyway
I don't remember anything about random scammers using fake mindcrack servers, but as I said, GenerikB was definitely doing some illegal stuff that required the contract.
I don't believe anything Rob did was illegal. Just very much frowned upon.