Although the Usenet's primary purpose and design is to carry
on discussions and conversations on virtually any topic
imaginable, the fun does not end there. The Usenet and the very
nature of its server peering and client server relationships
makes it an ideal place to share user-generated binaries and
files. Binary files are stored in the form of sets of encoded
text messages or articles on the newsgroup servers.
Binary files are rather large, so before one can be uploaded or
stored on the Usenet, it must first be broken up into smaller
parts and converted from binary to text message format. This
conversion process is done through yEnc and the binaries are
stored as multipart text messages, the native storage format of
the Usenet newsgroup file system. Luckily, downloading and
sharing files has never been easier with today's newsreaders.
Today, newsreaders are capable of downloading and decoding
multipart binaries and reassembling them back into the original
single binary file. Binary files can be any type of
user-generated digital content.