I think it would just give CEOs who want to do the right thing (and not pay) legal cover to tell the board of directors "Nope, not paying — the company is going to be shut down for a month. Deal with it, I'm not going to jail."
What if it was more than a month? What if it was.. permanent?
Then they totally failed at continuity planning, backups... a whole lot of things.
And it would give CEOs who want to do the wrong thing an avenue to destroy competitors under the table.
You could always hire a bunch of shadowrunners to destroy your competitor's computer system, but I don't know what that has to do with ransomware.
But hey, I guess you could use cryptocurrency to pay the runners.
This has always been true... and always been illegal.