Mash ups and remixes: Should users be allowed to create their own content using existing material?

REMIXERS MANIFESTO
1. Culture always builds the past.
2. The past always tries to control the future.
3. Our future is becoming less free.
4. To build free societies you must limit control of the past.
(Sourced from RIP: A Remix Manifesto, 2009)

Anyone who was born in the late 1980s onwards has become a part of a "media generation": a generation that has become literate in the ways of the internet and new technologies. The internet allows us to share ideas and information as well as building communities through the usage of technology. People can share their creations and thoughts through a variety of different sites and blogs.

On youtube, there are various user generated videos- some of which contain music that is solely their own and others which contain music that isn't. Along with myspace, youtube has become a place where people can share their creations and promote themselves.

Mash ups have become increasingly popular with artists such as Radiohead and Jay-Z being mixed together to form Jaydiohead, by DJ Max Tannone. In RIP: A Remix Manifesto, Brett Gaylor follows his favourite remixer Girl Talk, a DJ who also uses samples from different songs and artists and puts them together to form something different.

If users create something different using bits of other people's creations is it right?

When Jay-Z found out about project Jaydiohead, he openly supported it with a tweet saying: "There are 3 or 4 REAL gems on Jaydiohead." However, even though this was a good case many other people, especially those who work at the record companies, disagree with mash ups because they take songs without any permission and create something that the artists have not agreed to.  But, if the music is out there, surely it's there to be enjoyed?

I think that users should be allowed to create new content using others creations. Originality isn't around much these days, in fact many of Walt Disney's creations were stolen from things that were already in the public domain. So, maybe we need to 'borrow' other people's ideas to create our own successful ones?