1. A computer method for maintaining and managing control over content in a distributed context, said method comprising the steps of: storing control policies in a memory, associating content with the control policies by attaching to each content an identification of a respective control policy, for each content, the associating forming an association between the content and the respective control policy, wherein each control policy comprises at least (i) an indication of a set of users who may access the content, (ii) an indication of privileges granted to each user in the set, and (iii) an indication of a set of users who may define or edit the control policy; storing the control policies; upon a user requesting to access content, checking whether the user is indicated in the set of users who may access the content in the manner requested, based on the respective control policy of the content; for each content, maintaining the association between the content and the respective control policy independent of a computer structure encapsulating the content and separate from physical access to the computer structure encapsulating the content; and propagating the association between the content and the respective control policy to a derivative of the content.