A URL starting with two slashes is defined by RFC2396 #4.3 as having an "authority" component, but apr_uri_parse incorrectly assigns it to the path.
Created attachment 11268 [details] Patch for the bug
There are a lot of links of this form at slashdot.org. Browsers parse them. So this is not an ivory-tower RFC issue.
The patch should be superseded by the cumulative patch recently submitted under Bug 28453.
APR/1.0 fixes this.