Looks like Microsoft has been letting the ie6 download servers rot. Over the last few weeks, 'winetricks ie6' has been hanging occasionally, and today, it's failing right off the bat with
wget http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6sp1/download/rtw/x86/ie6sites.dat ... Resolving www.microsoft.com... 65.55.12.249 Connecting to www.microsoft.com|65.55.12.249|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 500 Internal Server Error
Personally, I think it's great that ie6 is getting the shaft, but it does make life with wine a bit more difficult. I hope this error is transient.