Ah, so when the British stole stuff in the first place, that was fine. But once they had it, they created a rule that said "finders keepers!" and no one was allowed to take it away from them.

(I grant that the whole scope of modern Western European history and law is a immense and complex topic, but the prior poster, like my snark above, is addressing a very valid topic: using a lax regulatory system to become a dominant player, then imposing rules that protect the established players and make it very difficult for new entrants to match them is something that occurs on many scales and not automatically a good thing, nor is questioning it "dumb".)