According to the present invention, there are disclosed a contents distributing method and a system which permits distribution of contents held by the client to the other clients, irrespective of the operating status of the client, and allows certain billing. In this system, a plurality of storage servers storing contents held by the individual clients are arranged on a network. The client issues a contents distributing request to the corresponding storage server, and acquires the contents. The storage server inquires, when the requested contents are not held, the retrieving server, and collects the contents from the other servers holding the contents. The storage server sends a billing requests, together with the billing information, to the service use fee billing server and the contents use fee billing server.