The present invention allows content to be transferred with source equipment retaining the content. Content is transferred to destination equipment while at the same time it is retained on the source equipment. This allows the content to be used on both source and destination equipment in contrast to the usual move operation in which content is removed from the source equipment and used only on the destination equipment. While content is under transferred control, the source equipment cannot transfer the control of the content to any third equipment. Thus, the content is held only on the two pieces of equipment: the source equipment and destination equipment. In this respect, content control transfer differs from the first-generation duplication which can produce multiple duplicates (first-generation) from the original content. Also, content control transfer differs from one-time duplication in that content control can be transferred to third equipment if the content is returned to the source equipment.