I recently read an article about one indirect effect of ever higher steel prices: theft and sale of used beer kegs to salvage yards. It seems that beer kegs are going for as much as $25 each at junkyards, no questions asked. With a replacement cost of $90, stolen kegs are a major inconvenience for large beer makers and distributors. But while the big guys consider it a cost of doing business, keg theft can be a matter of life and death for small brewers.

That's why some small beer makers have their own keg police forces to rein in this problem. They work to discourage theft by tavern employees by threatening legal action. They mark their kegs in obvious and unique ways to make them more identifiable. And they work with salvage yards to diminish the market for their kegs, and buy back their kegs on the cheap.

But here's a part that seems odd to me. Some of the salvage operations checked out by the reporter had hundreds of beer kegs stacked up ready to crunch. Yet nowhere in the article is there any mention of criminal liability on the part of salvage operators. Why is this?

After all, if you are a pawnbroker and you accept stolen goods, you can be charged as a fence; you certainly have no right to keep any items stolen from someone else regardless of how much you paid for them. And beer kegs belong to the manufacturers or distributors, the only ones who have the right to dispose of them.

So the lesson seems to be this: If you regularly buy stolen goods for resale, just call yourself a salvage company and you can get away with just about anything.