Copyright infringement and plagiarism are not the same. Plagiarism is copying or using the work of another person and not giving proper attribution to the source for his work. Copyright infringement is copying the work of someone who owns the exclusive rights to that work – a book, music, technology and so forth – and passing it off as your own. Infringing on someone's copyright gives that person legal recourse to sue you. And it is easy to move from plagiarism to copyright infringement.
Students and teachers who plagiarize often face disciplinary action from their school or university. The severity of the punishment depends on the individual school and the level of plagiarism, but for most that can include expulsion. For professors who are caught misappropriating the work of others, losing their job is not out of the question. Think twice before you copy your friend's term paper. It could mean packing up and heading home.
Professors aren't the only ones who could lose their job for copying and pasting someone else's work. Journalists who plagiarize can find themselves out on the street in no time. Readers expect journalists to be trustworthy sources of information – as do their editors. Delivering a story filled with copy-and-pasted passages from other reporters' or writers' works damages that trust. If it is destroyed, so is the journalist's career. Which doesn't mean those who work in business are off the hook. Plagiarism is frowned upon in the white collar world, as well. The defunct investment firm Lehman Brothers was caught in a plagiarism scandal involving the theft of a rival bank's research. It had to apologize to its customers.
Plagiarism's biggest danger is the ethical ramifications it carries. Students, journalists, writers, businesspeople – anyone – who steal the work of others and try to pass it off as their own are often viewed as crooks and cheats by society. At the very least, a student's parents are disappointed, a boss distrusts his staff, and a teacher loses the faith of her students and peers. Just ask the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who dropped out as a judge of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize when it was discovered that several passages in her book "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys" were plagiarized from other historians' work. Embarrassed, she admitted the mistake and said it was due to confusion about what were her notes and what was from other works.