The fundación abertis and the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UCIIIM) have held a seminar dealing with issues such as the Information Society, new technologies and Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT). The seminar, entitled Telecommunications in the Information and Knowledge Society, chaired by Dr. Aníbal R. Figueiras, Secretary-General of Spain’s Royal Academy of Engineering and Professor at the UCIIIM, covered these issues examining both their technical framework and their social impact, providing a global view of the current state of play of the Information and Knowledge Society.

The event opened with the paper given by Dr. Aníbal R. Figueiras: Telecommunications in the Information and Knowledge Society: technology-society interactions, in which Dr. Figueiras emphasised the man’s need to communicate and express himself and described how, over the course of history, the means and methods to do this have become ever more sophisticated, creating, in turn, social differences. With regard to the factors influencing the development of the Information and Knowledge Society, Figueiras highlighted as components of the process “that tend to impede it: the cost of moving and the risk of the new situation”, and as components “that favour is occurrence: the risk of staying and the benefits of the new situation”. In this way, the seminar’s Chairman opened the way for the rest of the papers, that covered in further detail these two aspects from different viewpoints.

In his speech The social effects of Information and Communication Technologies, Dr. Ricardo Montoro, Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, defined communication as “of key social importance”. Dr. Montoro highlighted available technologies and the public as key players in the communications process, making it clear that “futuristic fantasies in which everything is virtual are just that: fantasies. Fantasies that provide fodder for film scripts, but little else. They will never be able to replace the social relationships making up a society. One is free because there is freedom of opinion and behaviour, not because some virtual space, whatever the kind, says so. In other words, communication and virtuality accompany the real behaviour of human beings, their opinions and attitudes, not the other way round”.

Dr. Narciso García Santos, Professor at the Higher Technical School of Telecommunications Engineers at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, in his talk The classification and indexation of multimedia content, spoke of digital information and the need “to have tools that extend to non-textual information the current possibilities of accessing and searching textual information”. Dr. García Santos presented an overview of current classification and indexation possibilities, placing the emphasis on low level characteristics, high level characteristics, description of metadata via MPEG7 and indexation.

For his part Dr. Ángel Navia, professor of the Department of Signal and Communications Theory at the Universidad Carlos III, presented his paper Content management in communications networks, a critical review of the main content management systems in communications networks, for production, recovery, filtering and presentation. Dr. Navia’s talk ranged from the simplest communications models in which only one user (identified and located) is present, and there is only one source (also identified and located) to more complex communications scenarios in which multiple users, contents and nodes interact amongst themselves for better management of content and information. Referring to the latter, he highlighted the advantages of forums, virtual communities, search engines, blogs, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, etc.

In his paper on digital security Technical methods of digital content protection, Dr. Fernando Pérez González, Professor of the Department of Signal and Communications Theory at the University of Vigo, reviewed the most recent and significant concepts in the field of multimedia content protection, such as watermarking. Describing the enormous difficulties in preventing the illegal distribution of digital content via the so-called file exchange networks, Dr. Pérez González raised as a solution Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems. Dr. Fernando Pérez ended his talk with some thoughts on business models linked with digital content following the success of the Internet, describing them as the new challenges and opportunities for technology.

Dr. Tomás de la Quadra-Salcedo, Professor at the UCIIIM, in his paper Legal aspects of digital content protection, referred to the draft bill on intellectual property currently being drawn up and which will incorporate the provisions of the 2001 European directive on the matter. In his opinion, the current law on the issue has been made obsolete by the current possibilities offered to pirating by digitalisation and the Internet. Although technical measures have already been implemented to prevent reproduction (in music CDs and film DVDs, etc.), there is a legal gap which permits the making of copies if they are for private use. For De la Quadra-Salcedo, this conflict between intellectual property rights and the possibility of reproduction for private use is the principal stumbling block of the future act.

Dr. Álvaro Escribano, Professor at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, gave the paper The economics of the Information and Knowledge Society: Characterisation of the “Digital Economy”, in which he expressed his conviction that the economic fundamentals of the workings of markets have not changed, thereby contradicting some comments on the matter that have appeared recently in the press and which mentioned that the “new economy” arising from the introduction of new technologies had questioned the economic analysis of markets. Another key area of the paper was the effects of e-commerce on markets, analysing the effects of e-commerce between businesses and consumers and also its effects on both macro and microeconomics.

Finally, Joan Manuel Espejo, Business Coordination Manager at abertis telecom, contributed the viewpoint of private business and the management of the telecommunications business. In his paper The value of DTT, he talked of the current state of play of the implementation of DTT in Europe and Spain, a country in which analogue services will be switched off in 2010. Currently, more than 11 million homes across the continent enjoy DTT. In Spain, a total of 3.1 million households are DTT-ready. More than 2.5 million homes (some 7.5 million people) are already watching this kind of television, whilst a further two million families (six million people) would also have access if they bought a decoder.

For Joan Manuel Espejo, DTT, with its interactivity, will transform how television is made and will offer new sources of income for television thanks to pay channels and thematic channels financed through advertising. Thematic channels will provide added value in that they permit greater segmentation of audiences, and advertising will experience great changes linked with interactivity.