SSL error downloading NLTK data

Question

I am trying to download NLTK 3.0 for use with Python 3.6 on Mac OS X 10.7.5, but am getting an SSL error:

import nltk
nltk.download()

Answer 1

You don't need to disable SSL checking if you run the following terminal command:

/Applications/Python 3.6/Install Certificates.command

In the place of 3.6, put your version of Python if it's an earlier one. Then you should be able to open your Python interpreter (using the command python3) and successfully run nltk.download() there.

This is an issue wherein urllib uses an embedded version of OpenSSL that not in the system certificate store. Here's an answer with more information on what's going on.