I take your point about finite police resources, but you should not assume that the way the police operate in your own country is representative of how they work everywhere else. This is a global (planet) forum after all.
True. Im sure in other county's an even in some us citys they will still atleast go threw the motions of Trying to solve a case.
LOL over here thats called getting in some over time. When they put the hours in. and it atleast makes the victim feel they are atleast trying to solve the case. Even tho its usually a slim chance they even can inless that catch an easy break such as seeing some one by chance walking down the street on there way back to the station with a drill in there hand.I had an electric drill stolen out of my garage a couple of years back. The police turned up and in turn called out a forensics guy who took dabs and took away a cigarette butt for analysis. Never heard anything of course, but at least they did show up and put the hours in.
But they dont useally get that lucky and they leave with the cigaret butt and put it in a baggy marked evidence and a report that sits in a folder on some investigators desk. For some day when they have all the big crimes solved and all the higher priority stuff cleared and maybe they get around to trying to track down the smoking drill bandit. OR use it if some one else in the area gets caught robbing some place and pin all the robbery's in the area on them and try to see if the person has a drill or matches up the cigaret butt.
But back to the original post. Id ay its all going to be relevant to what ever happens with the drone causing some sort of accident. and think the bigger the incident the more resources would be put in to locating the owner even if there was nothing written on the thing that makes it easy to find the owner. and if it was some thing serious enough even a disposable email account could be traced back to some one. With out going threw some serious covering of your tracks. Which seems a bit to much inless some one were actually planing to do some thing nefarious with it. But in that case even wanting any one to also be able to get in touch if its just lost dont seem like some thing some one would do if they were planing on some thing bad happening or using it for some thing bad.
Tho I will admit when I first considered putting my number on mine. The thought did cross my mind or what if some thing happened were I dont want any one to trace back to me. BUT I concluded that thats less likely then just randomly losing it or a fly away were it just crashes in to a yard. and will just take the chance that if it ever damages any thing I'll just have to deal with it. BUT its a good thing I do have contact info on mine cause its helped get it back a few times.