I assume most reading this article are concerned with plagiarism on the Internet, so that's what I'll be focusing on. In fact, plagiarism in print media is actually easier to deal with: the articles don't tend to linger, and it's much easier to zero in on the plagiarists themselves. Plus, it's usually a career ender.
On the Internet, things can be somewhat more difficult.
Precautions
Before I even get into the aftermath of having your work plagiarized, I think it's important to consider what you can do before it happens. Of course, no matter what you do there's always a chance that someone will come along and snatch up something you've created, but it's always better to plan ahead.
Here are a couple of easy steps you can take to give yourself the advantage:
Let people know how they can fairly use your content. Under the Fair Use policy, anyone can make partial use of content without requesting permission. The problem arises when they overstep their bounds, so it's a good idea to set limitations and state them clearly beforehand. Provide a concise copyright notice (for example: Copyright © 2009 My Site Name) and create a page explaining the acceptable use of your content.
Get a license. You don't need a license; once you create something, it's yours. Still, it can never hurt to have something more or less official backing up your claim to ownership. Check out Creative Commons (which provides limitations while still allowing others to copy and share your work) and iCopyright (for something more restrictive).
These, of course, are just deterrents. The existence of splogs and content thieves on the Internet is an epidemic that will probably never cease to exist. Luckily, you have a number of ways to deal with them.
Courses of action
So, you're browsing the Internet, you're checking your ping-backs, you're reading your e-mails, and you find that someone is taking your content and putting their name on it (or otherwise not making it clear who the original author is). What do you do?
1. The first course of action is to contact the plagiarist. Send them an e-mail requesting that the content in question be removed from their site. Sometimes, however unlikely it may be, the person copying your work simply doesn't know any better. Other times, they'll want to avoid further confrontation.
2. If that doesn't work, take it to the next (and more brutal) level: contact their web host. If they're hosting their blog on Wordpress.com or Blogger, or any other free blogging service, shoot the owners (in this case the Wordpress team or Google) an e-mail explaining the situation.
For example, last year one of my articles was picked up by a splogger (in this case a human manually adding posts, not a feed-scraping bot). I sent him an e-mail and contacted the Wordpress team. The situation was resolved within 24 hours. In the interest of full disclosure, it's much easier to handle plagiarism when it occurs on blogs that are on free hosting.
If they're not on a free host, you can do a Whois search or visit WhoIsHostingThis to learn which host they are using. No host likes to be affiliated with content thieves (or anything illegal), so you can expect some action to be taken.
3. Consider contacting advertisers. If you see Google Adsense ads, that would be a good place to start, as plagiarists would be in direct violation of their Adsense policy. Other advertisers have similar policies, so be sure to notify them of the problem if necessary.
4. If what you're dealing with turns out to be a Splog, head over to SplogSpot and enter it into the database. Splogs are the scourge of the blogosphere, and most are actually feed-scrapers that automate the information gathering process. These are the reason many bloggers opt to not allow their full articles to appear in feeds. Here's an interesting article about it (read the comments for extra fun).
Resources
The sad truth is that, no matter how hard you try, content thieves aren't going anywhere. You may win one battle against a splog or a plagiarist, but sooner or later you can bet that another will probably come along.
So keep an eye out. There's not much else you can do.
If you're looking for more information on plagiarism, be sure to check out these other resources:
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