From SteamWrapperInterface.php:
* Note that PHP 5.2 fopen() only supports URIs of the form "scheme://target" * despite the fact that according to RFC 3986 a URI's scheme component * delimiter is in general just ":", not "://". Because of this PHP limitation * and for consistency Drupal will only accept URIs of form "scheme://target".
This is something that can be updated, as there's no need to support PHP 5.2 anymore.