I encountered this approach before (I think here on HN) and had a question since then: when video ads run faster, can't YT just compare the expected time to the actual time and flag the user, show an anti-ad blocking popup, etc?
That could get into clock sync issues though that would have to be carefully thought through. What happens if a user’s system clock updates during an ad roll? What about a user watching an ad on a train that passes through a time zone boundary?
They could measure server-side, which would be more difficult to block.
I’d like to see some combination of ad nauseum (play ad in an invisible/silent background to support the content creators) and auto-mirroring to bittorrent (to let the real video play while google thinks the ad is playing, and also, for anti-censorship).
