Question regarding using code from an unlicensed repository.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

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Question

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So I have a repository for my own personal tools I wrote for reverse engineering a Japanese Sega Saturn game in order to make a translation patch. I never put a license on it because it was really just for source control in case something happened on my personal computer I wouldn't lose it forever. I never really thought to make it private or anything. I've just had them here as I work on doing a translation patch for the game.

Recently another user has made their own repo that is using Claude AI to clone my code repository and it uses it extensively. They didn't fork it or include it in their repo, but you can see in the python scripts they're cloning it, putting it on their classpath and using it extensively. You can also see they're feeding it into Claude prompts.

I never really wanted my code to be used in this way. The user never reached out to me before doing this and has flat out admitted on other platforms that they didn't ask because they knew I'd probably say no as I wouldn't really want them using my tools to put out an AI Translated version of something I'm already working on.

I've made my Repo private for the time being to try and mitigate the issue, but it was available here previously:
https://github.com/TrekkiesUnite118/GrandiaTranslation

The repo in question is this one:
https://github.com/AngelouCurator/new-parm-archives-tools

You can see in the Readme that they reference using my code and acknowledge it's unlicesned. In the setup script here you can see the Git clone calls to my repo:
https://github.com/AngelouCurator/new-parm-archives-tools/blob/main/tools/setup.sh

In various python scripts in their repo you can see them putting my code on the Classpath and running it:
https://github.com/AngelouCurator/new-parm-archives-tools/blob/main/src/build_mdt.py#L30
https://github.com/AngelouCurator/new-parm-archives-tools/blob/main/src/extract.py#L35

There is also this repo who's artifacts are directly linked to the tools repo:
https://github.com/AngelouCurator/new-parm-archives-patch

From what little I understand on this if the code is unlicensed it means it falls strictly under copyright laws. Is there anything I can do about this to prevent them from leveraging my code like this? Some people have told me I could file a DMCA claim but I wasn't sure how strong of a case that was for this.

[istiakrahman15]

Yes. If your repository did not have a license, then by default your code is protected by copyright ("all rights reserved"). That means other people do not automatically have permission to copy, modify, distribute, or reuse your code.
However, the situation depends on exactly what they are doing:
If they copied or redistributed your code without permission, you may have a valid copyright claim.
If they are only instructing users to git clone your repository and use it locally without redistributing your code, the legal situation is less clear and may depend on the specific facts and applicable law.