Reproduced with debian wheezy and openjdk-6 and -7.
user@host:~$ /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/bin/java -jar /usr/local/share/josm/josm-latest.jar --download="-48.00,11.00,-48.01,11.01"
Repository Root: http://josm.openstreetmap.de/svn
Build-Date: 2012-05-14 01:30:59
Last Changed Author: bastiK
Revision: 5239
Repository UUID: 0c6e7542-c601-0410-84e7-c038aed88b3b
URL: http://josm.openstreetmap.de/svn/trunk
Last Changed Date: 2012-05-13 23:04:35 +0200 (Sun, 13 May 2012)
Last Changed Rev: 5239
Info: Missing preference file '$HOME/.josm/preferences.xml'. Creating a default preference file.
GET http://api.openstreetmap.org/api/capabilities... OK