According to the Oxford Dictionary, plagiarism is "The practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." On those same lines, ghostwriting is "Write (material) for someone else who is the named author."
Plagiarism is rampant in modern times. The Internet, originally designed to encourage academic sharing of knowledge, has become a cesspool of misinformation and cut and paste articles. Students in high school are told not to plagiarize and antiplagiarism rules fill student handbooks, but many times neither the students nor the authors of the handbooks understand what that is.
One big question involves the confusion between "copyright" and "plagiarism." This is where the question of ghostwriting comes into the picture. Ghostwriting has been seen as an acceptable practice since the invention of writing. Originally, scribes wrote almost everything for everybody and received payment to do so. Today, modern scribes (authors) write everything from books to reviews and are frequently doing it under ghostwriting contracts. That means they write the work and give up all their ownership of it to the person paying them. They also may sign a non-disclosure agreement that prevents them from revealing that they wrote it.
Why does this happen? Well, in our society, we are convinced that everyone is and should be a good writer. The truth is most people are moderate writers at best. We don't expect everyone to be a star football player, but we are delusional in our belief that everyone has the ability to write well if taught correctly. This is false, and the irony is that it usually doesn't take long for people to figure out they are only mediocre at writing, especially at writing effectively.
Some people then turn to developmental editors. These are the people that have good ideas but just need a little boost to express them properly. Developmental editors are borderline ghostwriters, but people who use developmental editors would not fall under people who plagiarize because in general, the work is their complete idea and work that was just not expressed well. The developmental editor (if working in a professional sense and tracking changes), drastically improves the work but does not create an entirely new work.
Many people, however, do not even have the ability to write or organize their own work. They could just be awful authors, but these people may just not have enough time--they could be proficient writers but they are also academic teachers who have full loads of teaching work and are then required to write a certain number of published papers each year. I do not feel badly helping these people, but the truth of the matter is that these people are plagiarizing when they do not add my name to their academic work. (And none do because of the terms of the contract I have with them--I do not actually allow anyone to add my name to his or her work without special written permission, and in some cases I would sue some of my employers for breach of contract if they did add my name because I do not want it to be seen as an endorsement for the work. I also admit I am not proud of some of the work I do writing cheesy copy.)
Would I like the academic recognition? Of course. I would gladly give certain employers my permission if they asked, but they rarely do. This is where it gets tricky--the author doesn't want to be associated with the work, so how is that plagiarism? Well, it is plagiarism because someone else is claiming to be the author(s). To alleviate that, they could state "and anonymous" as the author or claim "anonymous" wrote the work altogether if they contributed less than 25% of the work. They could also ask me for a pen name and publish the work under that if I would agree to it (I wouldn't). Stating an anonymous author wrote it is accrediting it to the proper author and not claiming to have authored something you did not. That or the use of a pen name is the only way to use a ghostwriter without plagiarizing. Now, how often does that happen?
One person complained on a forum that the author sold the copyright to the employer and so it wasn't plagiarism. This is not true. Copyright determines who can use the work and get paid for it. It does not determine authorship. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, is in public domain. That does not mean I can claim to have written it. Anyone who buys a work, ghostwritten or not, and then places their name on it claiming to be the author, has committed plagiarism.
Does ghostwriting plagiarism hurt? Of course. In the case of academics, and I am sympathetic to their cause, they are hurting other academics by making the university think they can write the required amount and still continue teaching full loads. In the case of academics, they usually do the research and provide me with copies and I compose the paper, so it is a joint effort. There would be nothing wrong with adding my name, though and making it correct.
The worst case scenario is when a student hires a ghostwriter. There are so many ghostwriting jobs available that it is difficult to determine which jobs are school projects and which are not. To make matters worse, websites selling homework have sprung up everywhere. Since the authors working on those websites do not care that they are encouraging plagiarism and cheating, it is impossible to legally file charges against them. Laws need to be changed to get rid of these websites. Student ghostwriting plagiarism is the worst because (1) the student does not learn (2) the student usually turns in an academic paper written at a higher level than what would be expected--this means teachers and policymakers begin to believe students at that level can write that well (3) other students are judged based on the ghostwritten work (4) teachers who suspect plagiarism find it difficult to track down the true author and once tracked they may find it difficult to get confirmation because of contracts in place.
Personally, I would want to be contacted by the teacher if it were suspected I inadvertently did someone's schoolwork. This would at least alert me to discontinue future business with that employer.
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