An American music industry website has been knocked offline by an Internet attack.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) website was unavailable several times between Friday evening and Monday afternoon.
This came shortly after the group welcomed controversial plans to help entertainment industry enforce copyright online. The proposals recommend that firms should be able to disable computer networks they suspect of facilitating piracy.
In a statement published online RIAA chief executive Hilary Rosen said the legislation would level the playing field for copyright holders.
The plans - backed by politicians on both sides - are expected to be discussed by Congress in the autumn.
CNET reports the disruption was apparently caused by a series of denial of service attacks, although no one has claimed responsibility. These attacks involve the use of hundreds of computers to flood target websites with debilitating volumes of bogus traffic.
A spokesperson told CNET: "Don't they have anything better to do than hack our site? Perhaps it took 10 minutes away from stealing music".
PA