I think it's great news for Canadians rights. I beleive whole heartedly in privacy and with every day gone by, we lose more and more, especially here in the states.
As for as how it effects the artists, I think Canada has a great system setup with how there's taxes on blank media that are distributed, doesn't seem to high, and benefits everyone. I think there's a slight amount of money that they make here in the states off of music branded cdr's, but I could be wrong.
As far as artists like Metallica and the likes bitching about others downloading, I'm of two minds. While they do have it well and don't need the extra money, it is still their property and doesn't give anyone the right to download it. I'm not saying I don't agree with those that download, but I don't think it's right, it's a big catch 22. I just find it funny how Metallica says they're in it for the love of music, but yet their show here last Sunday set people back $55 to $85 for tickets, that's absolutely outrageous. 99% of the music I listen to is on independent labels, who charge very reasonable wholesale prices to retailers so that we as fans don't pay an arm and a leg. The musicians and labels need to stop trying to look at the sales number and instead find other ways to create fans, and one way to do that is not have artists that have one hit song and absolute filler shit on the rest of the album, I think that makes alot more people liable to download just the one song. Who wants to pay $18.99 for that one hit single? (Though I don't care, I don't even want that one hot single.)