Link-Busters is a Dutch

anti-piracy Anti-piracy may refer to: * Anti-piracy measures Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking ...

service that sends takedown notices to

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

and other

search engines Search engines, including web search engines, selection-based search engines, metasearch engines, desktop search tools, and web portals and vertical market websites have a search facility for online databases. By content/topic Gene ...

on behalf of major publishers. Link-Busters works for major publishers such as

Penguin Random House Penguin Random House Limited is a British-American multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was or ...

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmi ...

Simon and Schuster Simon & Schuster LLC (, ) is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group US ...

Hachette Hachette may refer to: * Hachette (surname) * Hachette Livre, a French publisher, the imprint of Lagardère Publishing ** Hachette Book Group, the American subsidiary ** Hachette Distribution Services, the distribution arm See also * Hachette Fil ...

John Wiley & Sons John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Publishing, publishing company that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company was founded in 1807 and pr ...

, and

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

. The company was among the top 10 organizations sending takedown notices to Google Search in 2018. In 2024 it was reported that the company was responsible for over half of all Google takedown requests. That year it sent over a billion such requests to Google, and it broke two billion in early 2025, before reaching three billion that same year. Its increased activity has been described as a response to the growing popularity of shadow libraries such as

Anna's Archive Anna's Archive is an open source search engine for shadow library, shadow libraries that was launched by Anna shortly after law enforcement efforts to Z-Library#United States, shut down Z-Library in 2022. The site aggregates records from major ...

and

Z-Library Z-Library (abbreviated as z-lib, formerly BookFinder) is a shadow library project for file-sharing access to scholarly journal articles, academic texts and general-interest books. It began as a mirror of Library Genesis but has expanded dram ...

. The company relies on automation to generate a high number of requests, some of which have been reported as incorrect. 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 Copyright can be used to enact censorship. Criticism of copyCritics of copyright argue that copyright has been abused to suppress free speech, as well as criticism, business competition, Research, academic research, Investigative journalism, inve ...

References

External links

Company's homepage
Anti-piracy {{Netherlands-company-stub