When you put a link in a webpage, the browser loads the HTML, then loads the images as if you were following links to the images. In short, an <img src="lalala"> tag acts exactly like a <a href="lalala"> tag. There is no problem at all with having the target of a img tag being a cgi.

So your img tag becomes <img src="image_server.pl?image=goodpic.jpg>.

The CGI becomes:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use CGI qw/:all/;
my $query = CGI::new();
my $file = $query->param("image");

open ( IMAGE, $file );
while ( <IMAGE> ) {
        print $_;
        }
        
exit ;
[download]

You are on the right track. A lot of sites have "image servers" - web servers that just host images. Cuts down the load on any one server. I'll let someone else shout about security, but consider what could happen if someone typed "image_server.pl?image=/etc/password" into their browser...

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.