National security letters or old boys network or maybe just fat bribes to the right engineer. Could be a requirement for government procurement too, so not a law, just the requirement of a huge customer with deep pockets and negative price sensitivity.

if i gave a plausible hypothesis to this, then i would be downwoted and ridiculed here on HN...

Thanks for letting us know, I guess?

Unlike now, where instead of saying your hypothesis you're just letting every reader come up with what they think is a crazy conspiracy theory and ascribe it to you?

at least this way i spent my reputation to show a mirror, instead of shouting pointlessly into the abyss...

>or other pressure on them

Counterfeiting was a big worry as high-resolution color printers became cheap. They did it motu proprio just like today ~all AI gen services watermark their outputs.