diff --git a/lib/ansible/modules/packaging/language/maven_artifact.py b/lib/ansible/modules/packaging/language/maven_artifact.py
index 25b4717929d..02afe130b13 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/modules/packaging/language/maven_artifact.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/modules/packaging/language/maven_artifact.py
@@ -177,7 +177,7 @@ except ImportError:
 from ansible.module_utils.basic import AnsibleModule
 from ansible.module_utils.six.moves.urllib.parse import urlparse
 from ansible.module_utils.urls import fetch_url
-from ansible.module_utils._text import to_bytes
+from ansible.module_utils._text import to_bytes, to_native, to_text
 
 
 def split_pre_existing_dir(dirname):
@@ -428,7 +428,10 @@ class MavenDownloader:
                 parsed_url = urlparse(remote_url)
                 remote_md5 = self._local_md5(parsed_url.path)
             else:
-                remote_md5 = self._getContent(remote_url + '.md5', "Failed to retrieve MD5", False)
+                try:
+                    remote_md5 = to_text(self._getContent(remote_url + '.md5', "Failed to retrieve MD5", False), errors='strict')
+                except UnicodeError as e:
+                    return "Cannot retrieve a valid md5 from %s: %s" % (remote_url, to_native(e))
                 if(not remote_md5):
                     return "Cannot find md5 from " + remote_url
             if local_md5 == remote_md5:
@@ -441,7 +444,7 @@ class MavenDownloader:
     def _local_md5(self, file):
         md5 = hashlib.md5()
         with io.open(file, 'rb') as f:
-            for chunk in iter(lambda: f.read(8192), ''):
+            for chunk in iter(lambda: f.read(8192), b''):
                 md5.update(chunk)
         return md5.hexdigest()