This is necessary, and simple. 

See:http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/146306
There should be 0 politics about the lack of this.

In response to this if there is some reason you cannot
include this code directly into urllib (most likely),
please tell me what I can do within the time frame of
my reply to 1 email response to get this code included
into the python libraries immediately.

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The best way to get anything included into python is to
submit a patch.  The patch needs to be complete and tested
with all source code, documentation and tests in a single
patch file.  The patch should be relative to current cvs. 
See http://www.python.org/dev/ for more information.

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Barry, what do you think about this one?

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1) I wonder whether encode_multipart_formdata() couldn't be
cobbled together more cleanly using the email package (I
haven't tried it, but it's got to have most of what you need).

2) I'm not positive urllib is the best place for it, but I'm
not sure what is.

My suggestion would be to contact the web-sig@python.org. 
It seems like the perfect thing that should be considered in
Python's next generation web support.

Superseder: issue 3244.