My thoughts on the subject are fairly Pro-Anonymous here.
Anonymous is hardly a group of internet super heroes, and do a lot of things that are purely destructive for the laughs, and champion some causes I don't quite agree with.
On this issue however, I think what they are doing is well deserved. Gene Simmons was getting a bit excessive here, and is also one of the few guys who I don't think has any real right to be making criticisms.
To explain that comment, I want you to consider something. Right now the stereotype of a music pirate is someone who logs onto The Internet and downloads all the stuff from the latest albums being released for free, simply because they can and don't have to pay.
This does probably cost the industry a lot of money, though nowhere near as much as they claim. It's sort of like the assumption by the video game industry that every used game sale or pirated copy is money taken directly out of their pockets, which is not true, since ther eis no guarantee that any of those people would have purchused the product for full price anyway. Especially seeing as without such things prices would be cranked up.
That bit can be argued back and forth, and on a lot of levels Gene Simmons would be right if that was all that this was about.
The problem with music piracy, and why he is a Hypocrit, is the fact that the music industry in paticular tries to target people who already bought their products as pirates, and tries to force those people to effectively pay multiple times for the same material.
Understand that technology has changed quite a bit over the years. Back when people bought things like Albums, 8-Tracks, and even Cassettes there was no question that if you paid the money you had the right to that song. Music magazines and perodicals back in the 1970s and 1980s even encouraged people to both make backups of their collection, and transfer older material to newer material.
What's more, back in the day there were no issues with people bringing recording devices and cameras into concerts and such. A lot of those recordings and pictures of things like Woodstock? Those weren't professionally produced, but came from people who attended as say making a tape was considered reasonable if you were paying for admission.
When it comes to older bands, which probably includes KISS, a lot of them were not especially business savvy to begin with, and didn't make the best deals with their agents, they also didn't care about copies and media updates because any exposure to them as good exposure.
When some old fogey band who has been round since the Vinyl days comes out with a new, more business savvy perspective, and starts crusading, I have a few issues. Just because the world changed, and someone made bad desicians in their youth does not mean that they should be taking it out on their fans and gouging them. The Gene Simmons of today seems like the kind of guy who would go after a Baby Boomer for say transferring his Casettes to CDs rather than paying him for a CD seperatly, or transferring their CDs to a digital format without paying him a royalty. I doubt the Gene Simmons of 20-30 years ago would have ever thought of, or approved of such a thing, and what's more to the fan in question who DID buy his song especially back then with that understanding and those sensibilities, this is rather unfair.
Now, with newer performers who learned from the pitfalls of the older guys, the situation is a bit differant. Music conceived and performed right now is much more tightly controlled from the beginning, and your agreeing to a lot more, and the guys producing it set out with a much more mercenary intent to nickel and dime their consumers.
Given the agreements involved in music nowadays, it raises a totally differant question of right and wrong if you say download a "Hannah Montana" song because she's being managed much better from the very beginning than KISS ever was.
On the other hand, while Capitolism is a wonderful thing there are greedy bastards who take it to ridicuolous extremes and ruin it for everyone. The music industry is largely made up of those bastards. For all of the whining it makes major bank at the worst of times, and any layoffs and firings you see were probably going to happen anyway to optimize the profits made at the top of the totem pole.
Technically they are right however, as they are covering their product well. Whether they are corrupt, greedy, and fan exploiting really doesn't enter into it from a legal perspective.
Truthfully I do think that like most big businesses the Music Industry does need an attitude adjustment. How to go about that is a matter of debate however, and we know Anonymous' opinion on the subject through their actions. Do two wrongs make a right? Well that is for every person to decide for themselves. On a lot of levels I tend to think that since the music industry makes so much money from legitimate sales, that pirating doesn't really do much except pleasure the pirate. It doesn't deprive the industry of it's central revenues, which aren't these piddly little piles that they seem to imply. Simply choosing NOT to buy music at all despite the media hype is going to send a much stronger message. It's the people who keep all these music stores, the CD sections at big box stores, and other places in business (and justify so much floor space) that are the ones who can send the biggest message by simply not listening to the advertising, and what "all their friends" are apparently going to be doing (feeding into the hype) and just not buying the products. Very similar to what I have said about how to send a message to companies like Activision... hate what they do? Then don't buy games like the upcoming "Black Ops".
All of this rambling aside though, the bottom line is that Gene Simmons personally deserves what he's getting, because he is a hypocrit of the umpteenth degree. I'd go so far as to say that no musician of his generation/length of career can fairly speak on subjects like this due to how much things have changed. It's one thing for him to appeal to fans for money due to the era he started in, it's another to sit around and start screaming about theft when this is a guy who performed at a time when nobody cared if you made a casette while you were in the crowd watching a show, snapped pictures of the performers, and updating your media wasn't any big deal. All of these things changed, but especially when it comes to his earliest work which was not protected, I don't think he has a leg to stand on, the same goes for tons of other old time rockers and the like.