This study examines the value and price of digital information commodities, which are increasing in line with the advancing generalization of digital technology, via the Marxist labor theory of value, and explains how digital information commodities are produced, consumed and distributed based on this examination. We focus on the Marxist perspective, because it explains the inherent value and price of commodities in terms of the magnitude of social labor time involved, and through this, goes on to analyze the capitalist political and economic system as a whole. In this context, this study explains why these commodities are valueless goods due to the very innate characteristics of digital information commodities, and agrees with the adjacent assertion that the price of these commodities is a Marxist monopoly price. This connected analysis is supported by publications and numerous practical reviews, pinpointing how valueless digital information goods are commodified through state interventions such as intellectual property rights, and how these commodities are actually formed and maintained at a Marxist monopoly price. In the process of this analysis, we could see that mainstream media economics, ones characterized by actively embracing neoclassical economics, and to be more specific, those relying on the utility theory of value, as well as those advocating the arguments of the so-called ‘political economy of media’ which, while explaining the importance of knowledge and information via a Marxist labor theory of value, can yet be differentiated and contrasted from it. In other words, this study explains the digital media environment more fundamentally and concretely, centering on the fact that digital information commodities are of no value, unlike the existing approaches mentioned above, while also suggesting, via the knowledge gained, further implications for media and communication studies in general.
