The docs[1] say: .. function:: urlopen(url, data=None[, timeout], *, cafile=None, capath=None, cadefault=True) The code[2] says: def urlopen(url, data=None, timeout=socket._GLOBAL_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT, *, cafile=None, capath=None, cadefault=False): Obviously, the code cannot be changed in a stable release, and whether the default should be changed for 3.4 is a separate discussion. For now, the docs should be fixed to reflect the code. [1] Doc/library/urllib.request.rst [2] Lib/urllib/request.py