diff --git a/Lib/socket.py b/Lib/socket.py
index 6dcd1a693a8..24ef3af3ff4 100644
--- a/Lib/socket.py
+++ b/Lib/socket.py
@@ -407,8 +407,8 @@ class _fileobject(object):
                 nl = data.find('\n')
                 if nl >= 0:
                     nl += 1
-                    buf.write(buffer(data, 0, nl))
-                    self._rbuf.write(buffer(data, nl))
+                    buf.write(data[:nl])
+                    self._rbuf.write(data[nl:])
                     del data
                     break
                 buf.write(data)
@@ -434,9 +434,9 @@ class _fileobject(object):
                 if nl >= 0:
                     nl += 1
                     # save the excess data to _rbuf
-                    self._rbuf.write(buffer(data, nl))
+                    self._rbuf.write(data[nl:])
                     if buf_len:
-                        buf.write(buffer(data, 0, nl))
+                        buf.write(data[:nl])
                         break
                     else:
                         # Shortcut.  Avoid data copy through buf when returning
@@ -448,8 +448,8 @@ class _fileobject(object):
                     # returning exactly all of our first recv().
                     return data
                 if n >= left:
-                    buf.write(buffer(data, 0, left))
-                    self._rbuf.write(buffer(data, left))
+                    buf.write(data[:left])
+                    self._rbuf.write(data[left:])
                     break
                 buf.write(data)
                 buf_len += n
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 3285b248dcb..0ee5fd5ad21 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ Library
   while running under the ``-3`` flag: aifc, asyncore, bdb, bsddb,
   ConfigParser, cookielib, DocXMLRPCServer, email, filecmp, fileinput, inspect,
   logging, modulefinder, pdb, pickle, profile, pstats, pydoc, re, rlcompleter,
-  SimpleXMLRPCServer, shelve, subprocess, sqlite3, tarfile, Tkinter,
+  SimpleXMLRPCServer, shelve, socket, subprocess, sqlite3, tarfile, Tkinter,
   test.test_support, textwrap, threading, tokenize, traceback, urlparse,
   wsgiref, xml, xmlrpclib.