Republican bill would order ISPs, DNS providers, and VPNs to block piracy sites

Non of the people pirating content have money to buy more stuff. These tens of billions they talk about don’t exist.

I would be surprised if most US politicians are capable of understanding the concept of duplicating files on a computer

You are correct. It’s like expecting car salesmen to be able to understand how to do brain surgery.

Most politicians are failed lawyers. And if they are too incompetent or corrupt to be representing people or entities in court, they sure are hell shouldn’t be making calls about anything in society or in the political realm. And that obviously includes technology.

Remember when late Alaska Senator Ted Stevens described (with great confidence) that the Internet “is like a series of tubes”? Classic example of their wider incompetence right there.