KISS frontman Gene Simmons, besides being a rock god, is the biggest blowhard on the planet. So when he gets in an internet fight with the 4chan-affiliated internet vigilantes Anonymous... well, you end up rooting for Anonymous.

Anonymous is a shady, loosely-organized band of bored internet "vigilantes" who like to hang out on the anarchic 4chan message and, embarrassingly, wear V for Vendetta-style Guy Fawkes masks at Scientology events. Recently, with a typically ostentatious and self-important "open letter," they kicked off "Operation Payback," a coordinated attack on law firms, trade groups and other organizations and individuals with strong pro-copyright stances, and took down the MPAA website pretty quickly.

But that wasn't all that funny. This was. According to observers who were hanging out in the Anonymous IRC channel, there was a bit of a split over whether or not to go after "individual artists" like Simmons, who had made some typically aggro comments about copyright lawsuits recently. Some members of the group decided to take down Simmons' site, and were able to do so partially with a DDoS attack—essentially, a flood of traffic that overwhelms the target server.

Tieve.tk, the "official" Operation Payback site, apparently "distanced" itself from the attack. Until Simmons responded, as Slyck reports, with maybe the most clueless lashing out since Jesse Slaughter's dad back-traced it:

Quote:Some of you may have heard a few popcorn farts re: our sites being threatened by hackers.
Our legal team and the FBI have been on the case and we have found a few, shall we say "adventurous" young people, who feel they are above the law.
And, as stated in my MIPCOM speech, we will sue their pants off.
First, they will be punished.
Second, they might find their little butts in jail, right next to someone who's been there for years and is looking for a new girl friend.
We will soon be printing their names and pictures.
We will find you.
You cannot hide.
Stay tuned

Oh, Demon. Dude. Dude. The blog DANGER NAZI ZOMBIES AHEAD writes:

Quote:I read the announcement on his own page, roughly five minutes before Anonymous's IRC channel did apparently, because a few minutes later the site was completely and utterly dead. It's fair to say Anonymous didn't take the threat seriously. He's now made himself a real target and Tieve is happily advocating attacking him. Stay tuned, Gene Simmons is set to shortly become the first man with a negative IQ.