How artistic freedom different

More than ever, artists around the world are exposed to global culture through media, technology, tourism and foreign trade. Artists will continue to learn, adapt, remodel, transform, ‘steal’ and devise a multitude of other uses for ideas from other cultures and artists, living and dead. In the academic world, and indeed much of the rest of the world, it is not OK to use another’s work without permission or acknowledgement. How is this artistic freedom different?