Today, architectural drawings constitute an important part of major collections of institutions such as the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts in Rome among other institutes. The Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts have digitized a large part of the architectural drawings they conserve. However, the encounter with the original drawings still remains a significant point of reference for the researchers and the drawings are indispensable components of fundamental exhibitions that contribute to the capacity of the aforementioned institutions to energize current debates concerning the status of architectural knowledge. Within such a context, the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Getty Research Institute provide an ensemble of visiting scholars’ programs to conduct research focusing on the original drawings in the framework of their politics of vitalizing current epistemological debates on architecture. The democratization that accompanies the digitization effect grants an increase of the fascination related to the mysteries of having access to the original. At the core of the paper is the idea that a Marxist communication theory adapted to the age of digital capitalism should try to shed light on the structure of distribution that is connected to the division of labour within the production process, on the one hand, and to reveal how these technological developments are underpinned by commodification and fetishization, on the other hand. The elaboration of what we could call digital labour theory of value, drawing upon Marx’s labour theory of value, would aim to unveil the exploitative social relations that lay behind the processes of dissemination of the architectural drawings that are digitized.