At some point the whack-a-mole of chasing every leak costs more than the leak does, so treating a baseline of theft as an unavoidable cost and focusing enforcement on the leaks that actually hurt is more sane than trying to stop all of it. From the content side, the operators who stay sane about piracy accepted a baseline and concentrated their takedowns on the high-traffic leaks that genuinely divert paying customers. The full whack-a-mole is unwinnable, protecting against the theft that materially hurts is the winnable version.
the DMCA whack-a-mole reality, not legal advice, is that the durable approach combines the cheap protective steps, the agent registration, clean ownership records, with a triaged enforcement that targets the leaks that matter, rather than either neglecting the basics or exhausting yourself chasing every copy. so do the cheap protections and triage the enforcement. so get the concrete low-cost protections in place and then focus your takedown energy on the leaks that actually divert revenue, because the operators who handle piracy well are the ones who did the cheap foundational things, the registration, the records that prove ownership, and then spent their limited enforcement effort where it counts rather than everywhere, so the sustainable DMCA posture is not maximal enforcement but smart enforcement built on the cheap protective foundations, which protects your position and your revenue without the futility of trying to stop every leak, and get proper counsel on the specifics since the foundational steps are clear but the broader strategy depends on details particular to your situation that a general pattern cannot address.