He should have called it a "found electronic objects sculpture", and also glued a uterus to the bottom of it.
When his project is inevitably accepted back onto Etsy, he should make some marketing hay out of this, because his project is so ambitious and well-finished that Etsy thinks it must be a large-scale commercial project.
...probably didn't build actual clock himself, he's just cutting a base for it and applying a photograph. So, that's interesting w/r/t the article. (Edit: Oh, someone below me said that already.)
At any rate, thank you for showing me Regretsy. I didn't want to work today, and this is a good start.
If he is putting fully assembled boards into a premade box, is it hand made? In his post it sounds like he is saying he designs the front panel layout and has it cut and stenciled at a facility somewhere, and no doubt he screws in the potentiometers, attaches the knobs, and solders the leads. He says the boards come from China and are designed by someone else. He doesn't say if he populates the boards or if they come finished, ready for lead attachment. If lead attachment and the panel layout this is the extent of his work, perhaps etsy might not consider that truly handmade. Or perhaps they want more disclosure about how much is done. Maybe some consider that handmade, others not. It's kind of hard to say. Let's say I am a customer and someone is selling original "handmade" instrument designs in a wooden case. I very well may assume from this claim that it was their own design and they made the box. I probably would not be shocked if the board etching was done elsewhere. But then what if I find out that all the electronics were designed by another person and the boards are not just etched but populated in a large Chinese factory and arrive at the seller's house assembled. Was I ripped off by the claim it was handmade? Maybe.
He's not getting hammered for using a circuit board, I highly doubt Etsy is concerned about that. What they are concerned about is whether or not the guy is doing the work on these. He hasn't shown enough for me to be able to say that he is putting them together. He has pictures of a workbench, some soldering equipment, some wood and other parts, and the finished product.
How does this differ from a driftwood lamp or a clock with a ready-built clockwork? It's not just semantics. Obviously there are things that Etsy allows and things they don't but it's also the craftiness (is that a word?) of the project. I'll be honest that this guy's project doesn't seem very crafty, whether or not he's putting everything together there's nothing really crafty or unique about it. This doesn't take anything away from what it is or the demand for it, it just might not fit in as an Etsy business.
That's because moog have been peddling the same circuits/sounds for decades, attaching massive markups to Bob Moog's name. Allowing people to see the process is just part of the marketing game.
Not that they don't sound good of course. But the world really doesn't really need any more 2osc monosynths with 24db/oct ladder filters and no interesting features. Especially when they cost $1000 and up.
Half of this argument is rejecting Etsy's unfair demands for more documentation while my shop remains close and my ability to sell if frozen on non-existent grounds. Guilty until proven innocent policy drove me mad.
Moog is an international company. In a way, I'm not exaggerating when I say all other synths are just derivatives of what they do and they have the priviledge to not give a hoot about people looking into their windows. They know they own the synth world. As a small scale assembler you can understand that we cherish our procedures a bit more as it can make or break us. But to be honest, I make everything as open-source as I can, because I imagine it going to kids like me just trying to make weird noises. When I imagine a big company using it, it drives me mad. Something I'll have to reconcile.
The "hand made" issue is almost null to me at this point. I've made a unique enclosure for a device in a batch of three. They're made by hand.
This is a "featured item" on the front page:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/88946705/tomato-art-print-lovely...
Does the creator need to send documentation of them creating the original? Why not?
What's happening here is more like he made a stencil from someone else's art and says it should count as hand made because he paints each canvas using the stencil and puts it in a generic frame he made.
I know the man. Known him for years; lived with him. I watched him teach himself how to build electronics simply from books he checked out from our college's library. I've been in his workshop and watched him build his devices. He's legit, and this is fucking unfair. He's unemployed and this is one of his few sources of income right now.
He should definitely set up sales in multiple sites like Tindie or Gumroad.
That said, US business customs are hard to grasp for me. The only thing that is certain nowadays is that for everything promised in the advertisement material there is a mangled TOS clause for the company to avoid delivering it.
Heck if you don't have the right TOS you could get sued by someone who never purchased from you in a court on the other side of the country.
That is the case when there is punishment available, and both parties are acting in good faith. When the defendant is a "spammer" then there isn't really any punishment available: eg suing them would be extremely expensive and unlikely to succeed for logistical reasons. And a spammer isn't acting in good faith - they are poisoning the well. If you tell them exactly how your "poison" detector found what they were doing, then you've just told them how to work around it so the arms race escalates with the spammer getting a head start.
Spammers clog the pipes, drown relevant information under irrelevant one and hinder the free-flowing business of innocents, so we are creating procedures that clog the pipes, suck people's focus away and hinder the free-flowing business of innocents. And that get people used to arbitrary decisions and based on no due process.
You're confusing business policy for law.
I especially like the wood casework. I used to work for a guy who built his own hardwood cabinets to house his computers because his wife wanted things to be "pretty." The cabinets were oversize and easy to work on besides being beautiful.
What's the criteria for modification. How much must you change an object before it passes. Maybe if he covered it in fake rhinestones he would have been OK.
I think this would be something that Etsy should clarify. I imagine that if each case was hand painted with a different design it would have been OK.
But what if instead of a real painting, it was just splashes of color? Or a stamp print of your logo?
Sadly, I'm guessing your rhinestone comments dead on.
He could have described his process a lot more clearly. He could have said which bits were bought in, and then which bits he did more work to, and then what gets assembled to what.