# We encode in UTF-8 before calculating the HMAC, which is
# an 8-bit algorithm.
# python 2.6 insists on receiving a 'str' as opposed to a 'unicode'
# We encode in UTF-8 before calculating the HMAC, which is
# an 8-bit algorithm.
# python 2.6 insists on receiving a 'str' as opposed to a 'unicode'