We still think the /etc/hosts idea would be nice to test if the downloads.zope.org export keeps the same directory layout in dist.plone.org, and the docs updated to show this workaround and @cdw9's.
You indeed can fix everything in plone and collective do avoid using this url in the future, but people may have lots of legacy systems that will have this error, so if we can ease the pain of upgrading Plone to integrators it would be really nice.