httplib does not handle the download as expected.
The implementation of urlretrieve is much better and consistent, it does
the download
writing in chunks instead of loading all the file content into memory.

Also, the httplib can easily break the file content, if the client does
not
handle it. And this lib must be very simple.

The timeout is not in favor of httplib GET method.

Based in the above reasons, httplib was replaced to
urlretrieve, once there is no reason to reimplement what already exists.