A model of commerce People make stuff. People use stuff.
People do deals about stuff.
The stuff and the deals may come in any order, but neither come before the people. The model applies in many contexts, but is particularly useful in the digital and Internet environments, where the problems of metadata interoperability are becoming especially acute. Commerce is used here in its broadest sense, not necessarily having financial gain as its object. In dealing with intellectual property these identifiers form complex and dynamic chains. As e-commerce grows, reliance on these metadata chains grows with it.