Simmons has made unsympathetic statements over the past few years toward people who download or share music files for free. That apparently got Anonymous’ goat, and they targeted Simmons’ website, Genesimmons.com, in a campaign called “Operation Payback” featuring a pirate ship reminiscent of The Pirate Bay logo.

Anonymous isn’t considered a specific group but is rather a term used by various hackers and Internet communities that target and attack websites they have issues with.

One of the famed attacks of the so-called Anonymous came in 2008 after the Church of Scientology complained that YouTube had misappropriated an in-house video interview with church follower Tom Cruise.

Anonymous responded with a video message but, instead of an Internet attack, actually held masked protests in front of several Scientology churches.

This time, Simmons, apparently for claiming people who trade music illegally should be prosecuted, found his website hit with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Anonymous also hit the websites for the RIAA, the MPAA, the U.K. Intellectual Property Office and a dozen others over the past several weeks.

Simmons got his website up and running for a little while Oct. 17, and posted a notice that “our legal team” and the FBI were on the case and ready to nab some of the “young people” who hacked the site.

“First, they will be punished,” Simmons posted. “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 girlfriend. We will soon be printing their names and pictures. We will find you. You cannot hide. Stay tuned.”

Anonymous posted a response that was just a little bit more terse:

“We are just getting started, Gene. Enjoy your downtime and welcome to the Internet.”

That’s when GeneSimmons.com went down again and it was still down at press time – although at one point it redirected to ThePirateBay.org.

Click here for Gene Simmons’ website.