Yeah, I can imagine caring a little bit if (say) the pictured Moai sculpture was stolen since seeing it on public display at the British Museum is arguably better than not seeing in on public display at all… but stealing stuff from an off-limits dragon hoard inconveniences no one but the dragon.
I regularly visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s online collection to check out pieces that have not been on display for many years. The MMA does not have the space to display their entire collection, and continuous public display would cause harm to the artifacts. Yet they are still valuable for research purposes.
(Gallingly, because of a copyright dispute between the photographers and the MMA, the websites images aren’t of archival qaulity, and you can’t examine them from all angles.)
The bad thing is that now if someone asks for something back they’ll be able to say that they don’t have it anymore and it must have been stolen (again) no matter if it was or not.
“You’ll wonder why there are so many wonderful foreign treasures on display here, at the British Museum. The answer is quite simple really…Gun beats Spear.”
Great Britain is simply acting as custodian, protecting artifacts in a way that those people in their native lands couldn’t possibly. Take the Elgin marbles for example. Oh wait.