Bug#675618: lsb-release: cannot handle non-ASCII characters from Apt policy

Package: lsb-release
Version: 4.1+Debian5
Severity: normal

lsb_release fails for me with the following error:

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/lsb_release.py", line 208, in parse_apt_policy
    close_fds=True).communicate()[0].decode('ascii')
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 1325: ordinal not in range(128)


This is due to my personal repo having non-ASCII characters in its
(UTF-8-encoded) Release file, which shows up in the Apt policy:

  $ apt-cache policy | sed -n '34,36p'
   500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/misc i386 Packages
       release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=misc
       origin www.fbriere.net


I couldn't find any documentation about restricting Release files to
ASCII (not that it says much, given how undocumented Release files are),
so I assume that all of Unicode is acceptable in this context.  Let me
know if you disagree.


-- Package-specific info:
lsb_release output
-*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
-*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
    Apt policy
-*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
Package files:
 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     release a=now
 500 http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable/main i386 Packages
     release v=1.0,o=Google, Inc.,a=stable,n=stable,l=Google,c=main
     origin dl.google.com
 500 http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable/main amd64 Packages
     release v=1.0,o=Google, Inc.,a=stable,n=stable,l=Google,c=main
     origin dl.google.com
 500 http://www.deb-multimedia.org/ unstable/non-free i386 Packages
     release v=None,o=Unofficial Multimedia Packages,a=unstable,n=sid,l=Unofficial Multimedia Packages,c=non-free
     origin www.deb-multimedia.org
 500 http://www.deb-multimedia.org/ unstable/main i386 Packages
     release v=None,o=Unofficial Multimedia Packages,a=unstable,n=sid,l=Unofficial Multimedia Packages,c=main
     origin www.deb-multimedia.org
 500 http://www.deb-multimedia.org/ unstable/non-free amd64 Packages
     release v=None,o=Unofficial Multimedia Packages,a=unstable,n=sid,l=Unofficial Multimedia Packages,c=non-free
     origin www.deb-multimedia.org
 500 http://www.deb-multimedia.org/ unstable/main amd64 Packages
     release v=None,o=Unofficial Multimedia Packages,a=unstable,n=sid,l=Unofficial Multimedia Packages,c=main
     origin www.deb-multimedia.org
 500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/scummvm i386 Packages
     release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=scummvm
     origin www.fbriere.net
 500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/nes-emu i386 Packages
     release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=nes-emu
     origin www.fbriere.net
 500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/psx-emu i386 Packages
     release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=psx-emu
     origin www.fbriere.net
 500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/quakeforge i386 Packages
     release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=quakeforge
     origin www.fbriere.net
 500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/misc i386 Packages
     release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=misc
     origin www.fbriere.net
 500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/opencbm i386 Packages
     release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=opencbm
     origin www.fbriere.net
 500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/scummvm amd64 Packages
     release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=scummvm
     origin www.fbriere.net
 500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/nes-emu amd64 Packages
     release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=nes-emu
     origin www.fbriere.net
 500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/psx-emu amd64 Packages
     release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=psx-emu
     origin www.fbriere.net
 500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/quakeforge amd64 Packages
     release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=quakeforge
     origin www.fbriere.net
 500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/misc amd64 Packages
     release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=misc
     origin www.fbriere.net
 500 http://www.fbriere.net/debian/ unstable/opencbm amd64 Packages
     release o=Frédéric Brière,a=unstable,n=sid,c=opencbm
     origin www.fbriere.net
 500 http://debian.mirror.rafal.ca/debian/ unstable/non-free Translation-en
 500 http://debian.mirror.rafal.ca/debian/ unstable/main Translation-en
 500 http://debian.mirror.rafal.ca/debian/ unstable/contrib Translation-en
 500 http://debian.mirror.rafal.ca/debian/ unstable/non-free i386 Packages
     release o=Debian,a=unstable,n=sid,l=Debian,c=non-free
     origin debian.mirror.rafal.ca
 500 http://debian.mirror.rafal.ca/debian/ unstable/contrib i386 Packages
     release o=Debian,a=unstable,n=sid,l=Debian,c=contrib
     origin debian.mirror.rafal.ca
 500 http://debian.mirror.rafal.ca/debian/ unstable/main i386 Packages
     release o=Debian,a=unstable,n=sid,l=Debian,c=main
     origin debian.mirror.rafal.ca
 500 http://debian.mirror.rafal.ca/debian/ unstable/non-free amd64 Packages
     release o=Debian,a=unstable,n=sid,l=Debian,c=non-free
     origin debian.mirror.rafal.ca
 500 http://debian.mirror.rafal.ca/debian/ unstable/contrib amd64 Packages
     release o=Debian,a=unstable,n=sid,l=Debian,c=contrib
     origin debian.mirror.rafal.ca
 500 http://debian.mirror.rafal.ca/debian/ unstable/main amd64 Packages
     release o=Debian,a=unstable,n=sid,l=Debian,c=main
     origin debian.mirror.rafal.ca
Pinned packages:
-*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
   sources.list
-*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
deb	http://debian.mirror.rafal.ca/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src	http://debian.mirror.rafal.ca/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb	http://www.fbriere.net/debian unstable opencbm misc quakeforge psx-emu nes-emu scummvm
deb-src	http://www.fbriere.net/debian unstable opencbm misc quakeforge psx-emu nes-emu scummvm
deb	http://www.deb-multimedia.org unstable main non-free
-*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
 /etc/lsb_release
-*- -*- -*- -*- -*-
- none

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/3 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages lsb-release depends on:
ii  python     2.7.2-10
ii  python2.6  2.6.7-4
ii  python2.7  2.7.3~rc2-2.1

Versions of packages lsb-release recommends:
ii  apt  0.9.5.1

Versions of packages lsb-release suggests:
pn  lsb  <none>

-- no debconf information