[k-mcgrady]

Although it does depend a bit on what the cookies they are storing here are used for you cannot use implied consent to workaround the law.

Taking your example of signs in stores: if a store had a sign saying "if you try to steal from this store you will be shot on sight" it does not suddenly make that legal because a customer saw the sign and still decided to enter.

Additionally with a website you do not see the message until you have already entered and they have already placed the cookie so again, there can't be implied consent. It's just notification of what they have already done.

The EU cookie laws are basically, for non-essential cookies (e.g. mostly tracking/ad stuff) users must be given the option to reject them before they are enabled. Seems pretty simple + pretty fair to me. The problem is that most websites fail to implement it correctly. When they do implement it correctly it's really useful in my opinion.