The invention provides a recording media player and a recording media recorder provided with a high-security copy protection system of less complexity. A recording media player and/or recorder provided with a copy protection system stubborn to attacks and highly flexible in dealing with recording media of various copy conditions. For this purpose, various distributed copyright protection information (DCPI) values are used. The DCPI values include water marks in case of an MPEG stream, Copy Generation Management System (CGMS) codes, EMI (encryption mode indicator) in case of an IEEE1394-1995 interface, and user defined DCPI values. The recording is achieved such that DCPI values are recorded in user-unrewritable (or user-inaccessible) areas of the recording medium as long as possible.