A recording and reproducing apparatus (10) comprises an external device I/F (12) for connecting an external recording medium (16) where contents including AV data or an application program are recorded, a recorder (20) for recording a content read from the external recording medium (16), and a processing unit (11) for reproducing or executing the recorded content. The processing unit (11) imposesa different access limitation to an any content reproducable or executable by the recording and reproducing apparatus (10) depending on the install processing, load processing and content execution processing, and constrains the access to the content in the content execution processing depending on the reliability of the content.