l-one-lone
Joined 3 years ago
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635
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10
Member since
Jun 27
Recent submissions
Comment · 2 months ago
Comment · 2 months ago
Unfortunately, for direct cross-border sales, the regulation explicitly makes the seller the "producer" in the customer’s Member State, and requires registration there. Buying an envelope from a registered Greek supplier does not register the seller in Germany or France.
Comment · 2 months ago
The terminology is confusing. Under the PPWR, a “producer” is not necessarily someone who manufactures packaging. The regulation also covers businesses selling packaging or packaged products directly to end users in another Member State. So a maker shipping a board in an envelope can indeed be the packaging producer for EPR purposes.
Comment · 6 months ago
Disclaimer: I’m the founder of Lectronz, a hardware marketplace based in the EU.
This email leaves a lot of questions unanswered, especially regarding the long-term stewardship of the maker community. While I wish the new team at EETree LLC luck in modernizing the stack, "stabilizing the platform" after a two-week blackout is a tough starting point for earning back seller trust.
For makers who are concerned about the current uncertainty or the move to a new ownership structure, I want to reiterate that there are independent alternatives. We built Lectronz specifically to provide a modern, stable home for the OSHW community with a few specific goals in mind:
Data Sovereignty: We have a built-in Tindie importer. You can use it to rescue your product data, photos, and stock levels right now so you aren't "locked in" while waiting for the new team to stabilize their infrastructure.
Transparent Payouts: We use Stripe for daily payouts. There are no "disbursement windows" or mystery ownership of your funds.
Regulatory Focus: Being based in the EU, we’ve already solved IOSS/VAT. This allows sellers (inside and outside the EU) to keep shipping without their customers getting hit by surprise fees.
Our focus is on being a lean, developer-led platform. We aren't backed by large parent corporations or shell companies—just a dedicated team and a Discord/GitHub where you can talk to us directly.
If anyone needs help backing up their Tindie store data or has questions about EU shipping compliance, I'm happy to dive into the technical details here.
Comment · 11 months ago
I think you don't understand the GDPR. The GDPR does not disallow the processing of personal data, nor does it disallow the sharing of personal data with suppliers or other entities in the supply chain. For example, if you run a merch store, it's perfectly OK to share the buyer's address with DHL or whoever does the shipping.
What the GDPR requires is that the user is informed about the processing and the suppliers used, and in some cases, provides consent to the processing.
The new proposal which suggests that pseudonymized data is not always PII is a different thing. It actually opens the door to a lot of new problems in my opinion. For example, with this new interpretation, big tech might question whether IP addresses are still personal data (which is something EU top courts had previously established)? What about cryptographically hashed values of your social security number (easy to break)?
Comment · 1 year ago
Nope. That's not true. There is a provision that exempts people working for state security (e.g. spies), not politicians.
Please don't make up stuff: this proposed law is already bad enough.
Comment · 1 year ago
I'm continuously building and improving https://lectronz.com/, a marketplace for electronic enthusiasts and professionals that focuses on the open-hardware and DIY electronics communities.
We recently introduced "Threshold Pre-Orders," a pre-order mechanism that lets hardware creators gauge the market before committing to production/PCBA.
We have successfully tested this on four low-volume products already. See https://lectronz.com/u/lectronz/articles/introducing-thresho...
Comment · 2 years ago
Or get it on Lectronz, they also feature Solder Party's products.
"Within a Member State" is an important point here.
The relevant example is the preceding bullet on page 11: when a company fills a box and sends it directly to an end user in another Member State, that company becomes the producer in the destination country. In the article, the Greek maker is that company.
Micro-enterprises receive simplified reporting below 10 tonnes in the regulation, but they are not exempt from registration or destination-country EPR.