Link-Busters

Last updated
Link-Busters
Founded2010;16 years ago (2010)
Headquarters Amsterdam, Netherlands
Area served
Worldwide
Products
  • Anti-piracy
Website www.link-busters.com OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Link-Busters is a Dutch anti-piracy service headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It develops software intended to protect publishing companies from piracy by means of sending takedown notices to Google and other search engines on behalf of major publishers.

Link-Busters works for major publishers such as Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, Hachette, John Wiley & Sons, and Princeton University Press. [1] [2] [3] The company was among the top 10 organizations sending takedown notices to Google Search in 2018. [4] In 2024 it was reported that the company was responsible for over half of all Google takedown requests. [1] That year it sent over a billion such requests to Google, [2] and it broke two billion in early 2025, [1] before flagging an additional three billion that same year. [5] [6] Its increased activity has been described as a response to the growing popularity of shadow libraries such as Anna's Archive and Z-Library. [1] [2]

The company relies on automation to generate a high number of requests, [3] some of which have been reported as incorrect. [7] In 2022 the company was criticized for sending takedown notices regarding a book review website that was not infringing on copyright, and engaging in censorship by copyright. [8]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Van der Sar, Ernesto (2025-01-17). "More Than Half of All Google Search Takedowns Now Come from Link-Busters". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  2. 1 2 3 Van der Sar, Ernesto (2024-07-29). "Link-Busters Sent a Billion DMCA Takedown Requests to Google Search". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  3. 1 2 Van der Sar, Ernesto (2024-05-31). "Link-Busters Flagged Over 56 Million 'Pirate' URLs to Google in a Week". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  4. ↑ Strzelecki, Artur (2019-01-21). "Website removal from search engines due to copyright violation" . ASLIB Journal of Information Management. 71 (1): 54–71. doi:10.1108/AJIM-05-2018-0108. ISSN   2050-3806.
  5. ↑ Van der Sar, Ernesto (2025-05-03). "Link-Busters Reports its Three Billionth 'Pirate' URL to Google Search". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 13 May 2025.
  6. ↑ Van der Sar, Ernesto (2025-12-20). "A DMCA "Bot War": Google Search Processed 5 Billion Takedown Requests in 2025". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 14 January 2026.
  7. ↑ Seng, Daniel. "Copyrighting copywrongs: An empirical analysis of errors with automated DMCA takedown notices." Santa Clara High Tech. LJ 37 (2021): 119.
  8. ↑ Thu, Jan 20th 2022 10:43am-Mike Masnick (2022-01-20). "Totally Bogus DMCA Takedowns From Giant Publishers Completely Nuke Book Review Blog Off The Internet". Techdirt. Retrieved 2025-01-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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