A talk of "Cheap"

[funkyboss]

Cybergun is always a discussed subject. I don't like their "trademarks for more dollars" policy, but they tend to repack not so bad cheap guns (Read:more cyma ) nowadays for more reasonnable price sometimes, regarding the canadian market.
But still I can't agree with their business model. Just my thoughts.

[Ninja_En_Short]

For SRC I didn't included them because I don't really consider them to be cheap, more a middle class right before STAR/ARES.
And I said Cybergun because they still repack crap and the good ones are a lot cheaper in their original brand

[m102404]

Nice post. Nicely worded...but better formatting might help its read-ability.

When you use a descriptive term such as "Cheap" to generalize a wide range of items, I'd suggest that you start off by quantifying what you mean by it in some common way/shape/form.

I.e. you could generalize the current price points that appear...and say "under $xxx is what I'd consider cheap".

or

you could say, "a passable standard for quality is xxxx...and less that that is what I'd consider cheap"

etc...

It would be helpful to put some frame of reference to your position. A $200 "cheap gun" to one person might be a bank breaking be all and end all to another guy. Anything less than a tweaked out PTW might be considered cheap to a guy who has very particular standards.

[venture]

Cybergun is an interesting case. I have been ruminating over it since I bought my Cybergun FAMAS 3 years ago. I had read many posts on many forums asking "real" airsofters to boycott Cybergun.

Let us step back and consider this case dispassionately, without emotion. Patent and Copyright law is the problem here. One of the responsiblilities of living in the "1st" world is that we have agreed on patent and copyright laws. The gun manufacturers are going to get a royalty of airsoft sales in 1st world nations. WANT TO KNOW WHY THE CLONES ARE CHEAPER WITHOUT THE CG MONIKER? BECAUSE THEY ARE ILLEGAL GUNS IN THIS COUNTRY. The royalties are not paid so the price can be a bit lower.

So, we have established that the gun companies are eligible for royalties. How are they going to get them? negotiate with chinese companies to pay royalties? IMPOSSIBLE. or nearly so. How about be their own Cybergun? Well they clearly don't want to be responsible for that, they just want their royalties. OK, so they choose to form Cybergun or some enterprising people form Cybergun and the gun companies use it to handle their licences in the airsoft field. Fair enough, say the airsoft community, BUT why do they simply rebrand Chinese clones / crap and just collect money and do administration? Isn't that an immoral and unethical business model?

Well, let us now look at the alternative. Cybergun, an EU company representing EU and North American companies, has to manufacture its own product to appease the airsoft elite of the 1st world. OK, who has done that??? Oh, Magpul. They still farm out most of their production to China and we all love those prices!! Now imagine if Cybergun produced whole guns in the EU or Canada or the US for that matter! How about an officially licenced FN F2000 built in Cyberguns new EU based plant in Caen, France. State of the art facility with 300 employees making $45-190K per year. This lovely F2000 can be had delivered in Canada for a mere 1900 Euros, or about $3800 Canadian. IS THAT WHAT WE WANT CYBERGUN TO DO? Or maybe it would be a good idea to use a Chinese factory (like every other industry does) to produce these legally trademarked guns and we can have that nice F2000 delivered to Canada for 5 or 6 hundred dollars, not thousands.

Cybergun is helping us out sometimes too. Notice that their prices are dropping a bit. You will also notice that there will be no more Cybergun Beretta M9's. They are all Taurus PT92's now. They are the exact same KJW M9 but Beretta wanted 22% of each gun sale for itself. Cybergun turned to Taurus who agreed to 7% royalty. Much more reasonable. Thank you Cybergun, good thing Beretta wasn't allowed to just dictate what it wants. . . That also leaves Beretta without a licence handler, so that leaves the market open for someone in the community to step in and show us how to "properly" do it.

One more point to think about: People wonder why I can't get them Glocks. Glocks, in airsoft form are illegal in the 1st world. Glock has decided not to allow anyone to licence its patents, therefore I cannot legally get a glock in Canada for anyone.

[SuperCriollo]

What about Game face, UTG, Aftermath and CA Sportline ? I know that they are all rebrands exept CA Sport line, but I think they should be included on the list.

[venture]

It is all about money/royalties, not realism. They can get away with it until someone proves otherwise. Expensive stuff to do.

Armalite type guns apparently are not protected. I am told there are so many variations that a copyright infringement suit is impossible.

I think the VSR type guns are clones of Remington R700's but it seems no one (Remington) has ever made a case of it.

[venture]

I think I may have chosen a bad word by saying "illegal". I should have used another word. What I mean is that they are subject to copyright law, not criminal.

[Scouser]

hrm, i think if it is copyright infringment it is illegal, doesnt result in jail time or anything, but could put a serious financial hurt on you

could be wrong though

[Styrak]

Originally Posted by TaroBear

I notice they still aren't actual Taurus PT92s, though. They still have the slide safeties instead of the frame safeties, like the Beretta 92s. They can get away with that?

The company (in this case Taurus) is getting their money, they problem don't care that much.

Originally Posted by SuperCriollo

What about Game face, UTG, Aftermath and CA Sportline ? I know that they are all rebrands exept CA Sport line, but I think they should be included on the list.

Game Face is CA Sportline, Aftermath is CYMA, and UTG depending on the gun is usually WELL. So he's basically covered those too.

[Ninja_En_Short]

Again : if one brand does not appear here it's either because I don't have enough info on it or because the brand is a middle-end like ARES, CA, etc in regards of either price or conception.

m102404 your demand was acknowledged

For Cybergun they have indeed calmed down a bit on pricing lately yet do not be fooled by the licensing issues : yes it is illegal to call your product a registered name (at least where it's registered) but it's perfectly legal to call it another name (CYMA calls its thing CM.xxxx) and is done absolutely everywhere.
Having lived in Europe where they're actively threatening shop owners and such I'm telling you : this is merelly a mean to lock a flourishing market and impose their pricing.
That's why there have been numerous and this time 100% illegal tries to register names already taken by other companies (Heckler und Koch, Sig Arms, FN Herstal, etc).
There has been a law suit when ARES released the TAR21 because Cybergun owned licensing rights for the Desert Eagle and therefore pretended to be the only one allowed to sell IMI traded equipment. ARES basically went (rightly) "SCREW YOU!" and won the case.
The exact same thing happenned over other models including M4 but COLT licensing over the M4 has been long revoked (M4 now designate any carbine length AR15/M16 in common language and therefore can be used by anyone, happenned when COLT inteded a law suit against another manufacturer using M4 to name its guns).

For Remington and alike just think about this for a second : how many RS do they sell and what would they actually get from licensing ? Pennies (yes big ones but still), so they just don't give a damn about it and leave us in peace.
Actually Cybergun did try to aquire Remington licenses and got the slap they deserved... so KJ and Tanaka can go on making these