[drostie]

> It should be illegal to 'fake' watching ads just to get the content.

You mean, like, by-law illegal? Or just something more like "an illegal state" in a program? Because if we're talking about by-law, that's an awful sentiment and you should feel awful for expressing it.

If you mean by-program-state illegal, that's not actually too complicated: add a software dependency on your ad-generation or analytics code to all of your run-time code. You'll pay the corresponding cost in performance that any such paranoid solution is going to cost you anyway, and you'll be vulnerable to highly-targeted blacklisting of your ads anyway, but you can block those general ad rules and force ad-blockers to include arbitrary executable blacklist-code in their browsers, which is sufficient.

[darkmighty]

As a user you can always fake watching ads, there's no technical solution from the server side -- you have complete control of your browser (actually just controlling the display is sufficient). That's why websites don't even try to deny service for ad-block users -- it's a waste of time. So yes, I think a legal in the sense of law solution is the only way out. Unless you want to propose something like full DMR'd computers being the norm (essentially iOS everywhere), which I wouldn't want.