[meowface]

Sure, but even if you assumed Tor was perfectly secure, there are still other ways of being exposed (like someone causing your web server to issue a network request to a host they control).

No matter one's assumptions, it makes no sense to me that someone would register a VPS with their own information when it's pretty trivial to do so anonymously. Especially if you're running an illegal content hosting empire.

DPR's mistakes at least made sense to me; they're something anyone could have overlooked, even if they were still very naive mistakes. But I doubt DPR used his personal information when paying for servers. That's well beyond "unrealized mistake" into pure incomprehensibility.

[AlexCoventry]

They supposedly caught on to him by connecting an email address associated with DPR to his real-world identity. Wouldn't surprise me if that was an ex post facto lie concocted to conceal the true method, though.