Python's `urllib2`: Why do I get error 403 when I `urlopen` a Wikipedia page?

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I have a strange bug when trying to urlopen a certain page from Wikipedia. This is the page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCola_(drink)

This is the shell session:

>>> f = urllib2.urlopen('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCola_(drink)')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Program Files\Wing IDE 4.0\src\debug\tserver\_sandbox.py", line 1, in <module>
    # Used internally for debug sandbox under external interpreter
  File "c:\Python26\Lib\urllib2.py", line 126, in urlopen
    return _opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "c:\Python26\Lib\urllib2.py", line 397, in open
    response = meth(req, response)
  File "c:\Python26\Lib\urllib2.py", line 510, in http_response
    'http', request, response, code, msg, hdrs)
  File "c:\Python26\Lib\urllib2.py", line 435, in error
    return self._call_chain(*args)
  File "c:\Python26\Lib\urllib2.py", line 369, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "c:\Python26\Lib\urllib2.py", line 518, in http_error_default
    raise HTTPError(req.get_full_url(), code, msg, hdrs, fp)
urllib2.HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden

This happened to me on two different systems in different continents. Does anyone have an idea why this happens?

6 Answers
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