diff -r 66f2bcb47050 Lib/test/test_urllib2.py
--- a/Lib/test/test_urllib2.py	Thu Jan 12 08:09:15 2012 +0100
+++ b/Lib/test/test_urllib2.py	Thu Jan 12 16:22:44 2012 +0100
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 import StringIO
 
 import urllib2
-from urllib2 import Request, OpenerDirector
+from urllib2 import Request, OpenerDirector, quote
 
 # XXX
 # Request
@@ -1281,6 +1281,16 @@
         self.assertEqual("http://www.python.org/~jeremy/",
                          self.get.get_full_url())
 
+        url_with_spaces = "http://www.python.org/url with/ a lot of spaces/"
+        req = Request(url_with_spaces)
+        self.assertEqual(quote(url_with_spaces, safe="%/:=&?~#+!$,;'@()*[]|"),
+                         req.get_full_url())
+
+        url_with_spaces = "http://www.python.org/url with/ a lot of spaces/"
+        req = Request(url_with_spaces)
+        self.assertEqual(quote(url_with_spaces, safe="%/:=&?~#+!$,;'@()*[]|"),
+                         req.get_full_url())
+
     def test_selector(self):
         self.assertEqual("/~jeremy/", self.get.get_selector())
         req = urllib2.Request("http://www.python.org/")
diff -r 66f2bcb47050 Lib/urllib2.py
--- a/Lib/urllib2.py	Thu Jan 12 08:09:15 2012 +0100
+++ b/Lib/urllib2.py	Thu Jan 12 16:22:44 2012 +0100
@@ -195,7 +195,10 @@
     def __init__(self, url, data=None, headers={},
                  origin_req_host=None, unverifiable=False):
         # unwrap('<URL:type://host/path>') --> 'type://host/path'
-        self.__original = unwrap(url)
+        # percent encode url, fixing lame server errors for e.g,
+        # like space within url paths.
+        self.__original = quote(unwrap(url),
+                                safe="%/:=&?~#+!$,;'@()*[]|")
         self.__original, self.__fragment = splittag(self.__original)
         self.type = None
         # self.__r_type is what's left after doing the splittype