And what if I turn on the camera for a tenth of a second, take a picture, and turn it off. You won't notice the LED being on for a tenth of a second. Software makes it easier to prevent such things.
You definitely don't need software to add a little delay for turning off the LED, but sure, it would be slightly more complicated than just a dang wire.
Just wrote a test app on macOS that initializes the camera, gets the first video frame, and turns it off. You definitely notice the bright green LED being on for a split second.
You only notice it immediately if you're looking for it. I've gone minutes with the camera on before noticing the LED while I was distracted by other stuff on the screen.
I would guess you could do the same with a circuit, even if that means you lose on flexibility (but given the concerns of many users, I'd say it's worthy).