Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright law without permission, infringing certain exclusive rightsgranted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works.
Copyright infringement is illegal. If you are caught violating copyright laws, you could be sued. This could lead to a court order to pay a sizeable fine.
Do not copy anything from online sources. this is almost always copyrighted, by default.
In most cases Copyright infringement complaints are related to downloading copyrighted materials using torrents, like movies or MP3 that you normally have to pay for. Do not download copyrighted materials at all to avoid a sue by the copyright holder
The most important first step you can take to avoid copyright infringement of your own work is to register your workwith the the National Copyright Office. One way to fight potential copyright infringement is to do Google searches of your ownblocks of text and/or images from your work. If you find them for sale online then report the copyright infringement to the sellers ISP directly.