Yenc

The efficient and CRC protected binary encoding for Usenet messages - public domain - now standard
02.April.2003:
A new encoding has been specified by Ned Fried.
gZip-8Bit is an extension to yEnc with MIME and integrated compression.
The next round in standardization of Binary Usenet messages has been started.
[BinFor] in the keyword for "Binary Format" and you might hear more about it.
Combined with gZip-8bit is could be a powerful standard format.
Perhaps it would be realized as 'zEnc' - the final encoding and posting method
(before Binary Usenet splits to a seperate news-network).
30. March 2003:
Newsflash: Some neticens began to post yEncoded messages without the mandatory keyword: yEnc
in the subject line. Some tools are permitting to post without the quotes around the filename.
Both tendencies are not compliant to the yEnc spec. Programmers are honestly to fulfill the spec.
Seventeen moths after its official announcement yEnc is now the the
standard encoding for large binaries on Usenet.
It also used in many binary picture groups.
Meanwhile all major newsreaders have been extended to yEnc support.
Those who were not updated yet are no longer supported by their authors
or not intended for use on the Binary Usenet.
The common Web-Browsers with newsgroup access have not been updated.
So these programs are no longer usable for Binary Usenet.
But fortunately there are enough good freeware newsreaders.
And there is also VuePrint - a picture and binary broswer which decodes and displays yEncoded messages.