Well, consider the case with murder: they're not demanding that people proactively implement a system to prevent it from happening, are they? You're just not allowed to do it, in the sense that the system will attempt to find you, prove your guilt, and punish you after the fact.
I imagine it would be the same for making (use of) models which don't add these watermarks, no? The punishable crime is providing or using the service.
That's absolutely what they are. That and other crimes. That's why they're mandatory, by law, in certain industries. That's _precisely_ why we started using them: to prevent the easily preventable.
I suppose this logic stands in the way of a corporation getting what it wants and so it's automatically offensive to the HN "job seeking" crowd; however, even a basic reading of the history shows it's completely true.