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    Routine5 min read

    The quarterly leak audit

    A ninety-minute routine, four times a year, that catches the things weekly monitoring misses: new stage names, old removals that reversed, and hosts you stopped checking.

    Why quarterly, on top of weekly

    Weekly monitoring answers one question: has anything new appeared under the names being watched. It cannot see the things that drift — a stage name added three months ago and never added to the watch list, a host that stopped being checked because it went quiet, a URL marked removed in spring that came back in summer. A quarterly pass exists to catch drift, and ninety minutes four times a year is the whole cost.

    Part 1 — Re-check what you believe is removed

    • Take every URL you recorded as removed in the last quarter.
    • Open each one. A page that loads is not removed, whatever your notes say.
    • For each that is back, check whether it is the same address or a new one. A new address is a re-upload and needs a fresh notice.
    • Search for the URL to see whether it is indexed again, which can happen even when the page itself never changed.

    Part 2 — Re-check your own identity list

    • List every name, handle and spelling you have used publicly since the last audit.
    • Add any new platform, collaboration name or campaign handle.
    • Search each new one the way a fan would, including common misspellings.
    • Update whatever does your monitoring. A watch list that is a quarter out of date is the most common reason a leak is missed.

    Part 3 — Re-check the hosts

    • List the hosts that carried your content over the last year, including ones now clear.
    • Check each directly rather than through search — an unindexed page is invisible to a search-based check.
    • Note which hosts removed content and which ignored you. That record decides where to spend effort next quarter.
    • Check whether any host changed its abuse contact or moved behind a new CDN.

    Part 4 — Write down three numbers

    Total copies found this quarter, copies removed this quarter, and copies that came back after removal. Three numbers, four times a year, in the same place. Their trend tells you whether what you are doing is working, which is not something any single week can tell you.

    Make it a habit rather than a resolution

    • Put it in the calendar for the first working day of each quarter, with the previous audit attached.
    • Do it in one sitting. Split across a fortnight it becomes a background chore and stops happening.
    • Keep every audit. The value is in the series, not in any one of them.

    Work through it as a checklist

    15 steps

    Part 1 — Re-check what you believe is removed

    Part 2 — Re-check your own identity list

    Part 3 — Re-check the hosts

    Make it a habit rather than a resolution

    Your ticks are saved in this browser, on this device, and openDMCA never sees them. Seeing the same checklist ticked on your phone and your laptop needs an account, because a browser cannot sync to a device it does not know about. What an account costs.

    Automate all of this

    Skip the manual work — openDMCA detects leaks, files the notices, requests search delisting, and keeps re-checking for reuploads.