What means royalty free?

Referring to images and illustrations (audio, video, photographs or other creative content) the term royalty free is defining the right to use such content. Once the content is licensed under a royalty free license, which may define a range of demands and guidelines, the licensee is usually free to use the purchased image in any way defined in the royalty free license, which in particular usually means, that he is not required to consider a special period of use, for example, geographic regions, industries, a special publishing size and other restrictions. Once the image is purchased, the royalty free license is valid without geographic limitations or limitations in time and there are no additional charges to be expected, if the licensee attends to use the image in different ways. Royalty free licenses stand in contradiction to rights managed licenses, which usually restrict the use in a very specific way. The use, for example, may be reduced to a special print run, period of use, industry or geographic region and other things. Rights managed means, that the licensor is controlling every single given license for and the publishing of the image. and usually there are a lot of different prices and additional charges, in case the licensee wants to use a rights managed image for different purposes.