This suggests that a lot of this stuff is boilerplate. Often, it gets added to contracts because there's no cost in doing so (except to the laywer's client).

At the same time, it's not necessarily part of a broader strategy to which the company is firmly, if quietly committed, and which they'll stick to, even as the costs of doing so escalate.

If the baseline cost of finding and hiring the right people is at all significant, economizing by lowering resistance is a no-brainer. Just treat this stuff like default settings from a useful, if not totally UX-savvy provider of software, and don't raise any eyebrows unless you get unexpected and seemingly arbitrary or mindless pushback.

The lesson though is that the answer is always no unless you ask.

re: your last sentence, what made your situation special?