2 is probably not legal. The onus is on a manufacturer to prove that the customer's changes caused damage sufficient to negate their warranty responsibilities.
Having a device in their database as NEVER_UNLOCKED takes away any onus from having to look for this in the first place for a large % of users.
Additionally this is kind of important for a company that's had a history of selling devices with hardware defects. It'd be very useful for them to know the RMA rate and whether damage was caused by such a defect or whether it was from a 3rd party software issue.
I'd argue that it's possible in 2023.
BTW: PINE64 did better on the PinePhone Pro, and (since it's also going to be Rockchip (RK3566) based in all likelihood) is unlikely to replicate the mistake on the PinePhone 2.
Which court case are you citing?
Collecting that data is about not wasting time looking for issues caused by unlocking and not grouping unlocked device issues in with locked device issues.