I would suspect flashing your firmware to the globally standard one would become commonplace if printers sold in NY came with a nerfed version.

On principle, yes, but also for maintenance. The nerfed firmware that's only required in a few jurisdictions is almost assuredly going to fall out-of-sync with mainline features.

"The rule saying you can't print the thing that you either weren't going to print, or you weren't going to let the rule tell you not to print, wants you to run old/broken software." No matter which side of that you fall on, you're upgrading the software.

I doubt any meaningful detection would be worth implementing just for New York, so you’ll get a cut down firmware that supports 5 hard coded models. You’ll need to flash your own firmware to print anything else.