The Pirate Bay this week criticized the hacktivist group Anonymous for performing a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on its behalf. To understand where this is coming from, we have to backpedal a bit.

Last month, a UK court ordered that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must block access to The Pirate Bay. My colleague Zack Whittaker reported (10 million face 'Pirate Bay' block after UK court rules):

The Pirate Bay, the Magnet-link directory used by file-sharers, will be blocked by the UK’s largest broadband providers, after a court ruling declared the site illegal. ISPs Sky Broadband, Everything Everywhere, along with TalkTalk, O2 Broadband, and Virgin Media were forced by the High Court in London to restrict access to the site which is claimed to be a hub for people to download copyrighted material illegally.

Earlier this month, Whittaker followed up to say that Virgin was the first to implement the block (UK's Pirate Bay blockade begins, but only ISPs must oblige):

Virgin Media yesterday threw the brakes on its users accessing The Pirate Bay. The UK’s second largest broadband provider with more than 4 million users confirmed it had blocked access to The Pirate Bay late on Wednesday evening, UK time.

On Tuesday, Anonymous launched a DDoS attack against Virgin Media's website. When the website went down, UKAnonymous2012 sent out the following message on Twitter:

Love from the http://piratebay.org #TANGODOWN http://www.virginmedia.com/ @AnonAteam #anonymous #lulzsec #ddos #expectus #OpTPB #Antisec #RT

Virgin Media confirmed the attack and took its website offline for an hour:

Our website has been the subject of denial of service attacks so we've taken the site offline for a short period of time. We're aware some groups are claiming the attacks are a result of the recent High Court order which requires ISPs to prevent access to the Pirate Bay.

This was quickly followed by The Pirate Bay denouncing the attack on Facebook:

Seems like some random Anonymous groups have run a DDOS campaign against Virgin media and some other sites. We'd like to be clear about our view on this: We do NOT encourage these actions. We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us. So don't fight them using their ugly methods. DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship.

The Pirate Bay instead gave the group advice on how to fight the good fight:

If you want to help; start a tracker, arrange a manifestation, join or start a pirate party, teach your friends the art of bittorrent, set up a proxy, write your political representatives, develop a new p2p protocol, print some pro piracy posters and decorate your town with, support our promo bay artists or just be a nice person and give your mom a call to tell her you love her.

Given that Anonymous has been supporting The Pirate Bay for years, this might come as a shock to some of the group's members. So, how did Anonymous take the news?

On Wednesday, UKAnonymous2012 sent out the following message on Twitter:

#Anonymous #AnonAteam has again #TANGODOWN http://www.virginmedia.com/ #ExpectUs #DDOS #OpTPB #OpTrialAtHome #Lulz #RT @DwayneV1x @AnonAteam #RT

At the time of writing on Thursday, virginmedia.com is still down.

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