Why have #md5=... in the URL anchor?

Question

Some download links contain a md5 value in the URL anchor, for instance:

http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/d/distribute/distribute-0.6.1.tar.gz#md5=e6224b1da4636dd8ae53407fc67bb35b

What is the intent behind this convention? Are there download tools or HTTP clients that make use of this encoded md5 value?

wget or curl does not seem to use it:

$ wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/d/distribute/distribute-0.6.1.tar.gz#md5=e6224b1da4636dd8ae53407fc67bb353
[...]
Saving to: `distribute-0.6.1.tar.gz'
[...]

$ ls -a
.  ..  distribute-0.6.1.tar.gz

Answer 1

That is for your own independent verification purposes.

Adding it as an anchor allows it to be ignored as part of the URL, while still providing it as part of the link.

Also, the convention is welcoming to third party apps that may hash the file, though I do not know of any that actually do.