From the moment you're able to comprehend the subject-- maybe in third or fourth grade-- teachers aggressively emphasize the horrific nature of plagiarism, that it is one of the worst crimes we as students could ever commit. However, with the idea of assemblage, it spins plagiarism on its head. I don't think Eiola and Selber are trying to give students a way to plagiarize and not be reprimanded for it, but they open up discussion to a different type of assignment.
Throughout college, I've had to do many papers like the ones suggested in the article. I create a main point, but I use articles and essays and documents that have already been published to support my claim. By having different sources by various writers and various opinions, the paper can become much more nuanced and in depth than any paper strictly based on my own opinion. By remixing all the points of view, you get something new from articles that might be years old. The difference between this and plagiarism is you're not calling everything you're own: you're using it as support and evidence.
Even take popular media, such as Buzzfeed. Many of their articles and galleries take old media and remix it into something new. They use photos from Disney movies, other peoples' Instagram posts, tumblr posts, etc. They never claim to own these mediums, but they use them in new ways and create new posts with them. Without the added support of those posts, the articles Buzzfeed posts probably wouldn't exist.
Our culture is becoming an assemblage/remix culture and there's no turning back. I don't think it's a bad thing either. It just means we are taking in multiple mediums, meshing them together, and creating new remixes from them.
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