I think it's just an excuse to avoid making it feasible for the public to get the data.

Your imagination can't cover how bad you might think it is (and yet it isn't that bad).

Or at least I don't want to explain to "20 years later Monday Morning Quarterback".

Used to be relevant data was in a document but much is no stored in specialized web apps whose data in turn is stored in a db.

Maybe their schema has triggers and stuff