Like it or not, the cutting edge of internet technology has been populated by pornographers, sexual capitalists and voyeurs. Video streaming, high quality image transfer, pay-for-view sites ... all these innovations have been driven by the need for consumers to gain access to sexual images and ideas. Sex sells is an old story but old stories are sometimes the best stories.
In the early stages of the computer revolution, computer capacity was small compared to the types of images which were desired. A number of formats were tried. An early effort was the .com files which are images in the form of a compiled code. One example is rednet.com

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Click here to download rednet.com an actual example of these files. Once downloaded this file can be run much like a .exe file. The file is being transferred in zip format because it is now conventional. This particular file can be transferred over antiquated email systems without substantial reconfiguring, a problem with early file transfer.