But the landlord (the societal arbiter) agreed in this case - the software denied me. Very much an issue of the software in this case.

The issue is that policy alone is insufficient. Humans can look past the policy's rigidity when necessary; software can't.

More than that - policy is designed to be interpreted by humans, to be bent or overriden when needed. There are processes in place for that - from a simple handshake deal, through a written contract amendment, to the court system. When software is tasked with enforcing policies, there is no bending, no overriding, no special cases. In this way, software breaks the policies.