http://dev.aol.com/aim/oscar/ says, "All strings in Feedbag are UTF8 encoded." So stop trying to validate stuff as utf8 then salvage when it isn't and just display broken crap or crash. I'm not sure if this is actually a good idea. Our cleanlist function in family_feedbag.c should probably remove or fix strings that aren't utf8, but I'm not about to do that right now. If someone else wants to feel free.