Institutions' legal departments are in the business of minimising legal risk to their employers. There's no upside to them to give the go-ahead to an academic a

Institutions' legal departments are in the business of minimising legal risk to their employers. There's no upside to them to give the go-ahead to an academic asking 'can I do X' for X dubiously compliant even if probably low-risk, since if they do and then a journal does get up-in-arms about it, they assumed responsibility. Their saying 'no' has no such risk to them. So they're incentivised to err on the conservative side.