[Tor3]

I read an interview with a bunch of different young people. They all basically said "I just click 'yes' or 'accept' automatically". It sounded like they all believed that this was something they had to do in order to get to the content.

Bad implementation of the EU law indeed, as another comment said. It fails the purpose completely and just create more problems for nearly everyone.

[cjpearson]

In many cases it is required to access the content. Courts have allowed "Consent or pay" for sites such as newspapers.

[Tor3]

In some cases is how I would state it. It's actually very rare that you have to consent to 'accept all cookies' to read content, I've never actually seen it myself. 'Pay if you want to read more' is common, for certain types of sites.