[2] On 18 October 2007, the website's servers, located in the Netherlands, were raided and shut down by Gloucestershire police in cooperation with the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) in response to complaints received from major US film studios about TV Links.

[5] On about 20 March 2007, the website was updated to use a streaming web-based video player, and direct external links were no longer made available.

[2][6][7] On 18 October 2007, owner David Rock was arrested by the Gloucestershire police in cooperation with the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the website was shut down.

[4][8] In a statement issued by FACT following the events, local trading standards head Roger Marles implied that the website's update from hyperlinks to a streaming video player might have affected the shutdown.

He stated that the arrest and shutdown were initiated because TV Links allowed users "[to view] any one of a large number of films and television programmes directly via the website.

[14][15] Eva Wiseman of The Guardian had described the practices of linking to copyrighted content as "teetering on the edge of illegality" in an article on similar video directory services.

[16] On the other hand, it was speculated that concerns over the popularity of websites such as TV Links were an influence on the launch of official online video on demand services from the UK's terrestrial television networks such as BBC iPlayer and 4od.