Message 100582 - Python tracker

As Florent said, it is a rule of py3k to avoid implicit encoding/decoding. The fact that it could have made sense for 2.x as well is not relevant, since the change was only done in py3k (and for good reason: we normally try not to break compatibility without prior notice).

In any case, I have trouble understanding your concern here. Do you think the change is bad? Is it really that difficult to support it in lxml?