The present invention makes it possible to distribute digital content managed under copyright to a large number of users through a communications network while ensuring copyright protection. The web server 12 distributes images requested by the user through the Internet to the user PC 6. The image data distributed from the web server 12 is encrypted and can only be decrypted by the special image editor 22 on the user PC 6. Control data indicating the usage restrictions according to copyright are included in the image data distributed from the web server 12. The image editor 22 controls the edit operations and print specifications that can be used with the images downloaded from the web server 12 according to that control data. The image editor 22 carries out image printing only in the case where a settlement process for image fees is completed.