diff --git a/lib/request/basic.py b/lib/request/basic.py
index ba1f6df49..92be0e2bb 100644
--- a/lib/request/basic.py
+++ b/lib/request/basic.py
@@ -137,7 +137,6 @@ def decodePage(page, contentEncoding, contentType):
     return page
 
 def processResponse(page, responseHeaders):
-    page = sanitizeAsciiString(page)
     page = getUnicode(page)
     parseResponse(page, responseHeaders)
     if conf.parseErrors: