Creativity

The existence of new media creates an opportunity for creative users of the Internet to showcase their talents to the world. People are often inspired by the things they see and hear throughout their day, but the ability to blog/tweet/post about what spurred their muse is something that couldn't be done a decade ago. The rise of open source material, video-editing software and the acceptance of crowdsourcing gave artists the chance to collect new media files and create new works out of them, such as: mashups, parodies, and mods to original games/videos. To see this in more practical terms, think of the home page of YouTube. The first page is filled with popular music videos, parodies of pop culture, and edited clips of user-recorded videos (ex: Hamsterdance, RKO-out of nowhere, etc).

Most of the time, users stroke their creativity to poke fun of  people or events in videos they saw for their own entertainment, and the original content publishers don't have any objections to the subsequent parody videos. When a recording label or a bigger name company takes material from a competitor for their own business purposes or even to mock the competitors, one of the companies involved calls for legal action due to copyright violations or other legal issues. In an odd case publicized in the New York Times, several YouTube users produced mashup videos where clips of Disney characters moving were set to the music of Soulja Boy. Although the article states that some companies like Nickolodeon allow users to manipulate its videos to publish new material via new media outlets, Disney holds firm to the belief that "any unauthorized use of Disney property is stealing" (Brooks). Even though the Soulja Boy mashups were obvious parodies, Disney allowed YouTube to keep the videos up on its site. Maybe this was a case where the parodies were funny enough for the parent companies to "let it go"?

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/media/24crank.html?_r=0