diff --git a/aqt/editor.py b/aqt/editor.py
index 8ad50f7ce..d758c7903 100644
--- a/aqt/editor.py
+++ b/aqt/editor.py
@@ -7,6 +7,8 @@ import urllib2
 import ctypes
 import urllib
 
+from urlparse import urlparse, urlunparse
+
 from anki.lang import _
 from aqt.qt import *
 from anki.utils import stripHTML, isWin, isMac, namedtmp, json, stripHTMLMedia
@@ -837,6 +839,12 @@ to a cloze type first, via Edit>Change Note Type."""))
         self.mw.progress.start(
             immediate=True, parent=self.parentWindow)
         try:
+            # urllib2 doesn't work properly with IRI
+            # The following code translates IRI to standard URI
+            scheme, netloc, path, params, query, fragment = urlparse(url)
+            idna_netloc = urllib2.unquote(netloc.encode("ascii")).decode("utf-8").encode("idna")
+            url = urlunparse([scheme, idna_netloc, path, params, query, fragment])
+
             req = urllib2.Request(url, None, {
                 'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Anki)'})
             filecontents = urllib2.urlopen(req).read()