Protecting my software

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?

Virginia, though I'd think this is general US law.

I own a small website dedicated to gaming, and in most cases gaming communities wouldn't even have a reason to have protections, but our members have made certain programs/tools and I as the owner claim "ownership" since I own the community. All the developers have also forfeited rights to our group.

So the issue is, others are distributing our software, and I do not want them to. Would I need to be a LLC or Inc. to be able to protect our software from unauthorized distribution, or could we simply claim intellectual property rights?

Do you and/or your members have a license from the original (let's say.. Blizzard?) owners to produce/distribute these programs/tools?

Or is this a game you yourself have created and are distributing?

You can "claim" ownership all day long. The issue would be proving ownership if you ever actually sued somebody (which I highly doubt you ever would). How would you prove that these people gave you software? Just because they posted a link to it in your forums, or even if you host it the file, doesn't mean you have exclusive rights to distribute it.

Secondly even if you were able to prove you had exclusive rights to this software they fact that you are almost certainly breaking the EULA of the software you are modifying is problematic. Courts do not look favorably on copyright claims coming from people who themselves are violating the IP rights of another.