My policy for personal projects? Let them and move on. Even if they make $1m for my work and get covered by NYTimes, let them. Once I have published my work, nobody can do anything to make it less valuable to me. What I got from my work was the experience and pride in making it. I am proud of what I do and don't much care for accolades or money once the project is finished, even if it cost me something small. Nevertheless, I put copyright notices on my work (CC dowhatever-license) and request that they notify me before publishing my work.<p>If I ever needed to really protect my work, I wouldn't hesitate to put simple non-annoying/non-intrusive software blocks to deter most casual infringements however, I would never put in crazy DRM. And if someone still manages to steal it, I would let them and move on.
It can be to your advantage if your competition steals from you because (1) they don't understand the context, (2) they copy the flaws, and (3) you'll always be ahead of them by at least a few months since the stuff they copied is old.