I get that they may not care to make nice documented APIs or follow standards, but they clearly use a lot of money to actively prevent you from even reverse eng

I get that they may not care to make nice documented APIs or follow standards, but they clearly use a lot of money to actively prevent you from even reverse engineering etc. I'd guess it's part just some knee-jerk business ideology and attempts at vendor lock-in and SaaS scams. Lock-in is clearly anticompetitive, and probably illegal, but law enforcement cares more about people smoking weed etc. The upcoming EU data act seems to try to tackle some of these. But I have very little hope it will amount to much. EU doesn't regulate business, business regulates EU.