Anyway, we are unlikely to change this stuff until it gets annoying for ousrselves, sorry.
"Welcome to the new internet."
On the other note - MHO is it was a Bad Idea to put these checks into the resolver library. No objections towards having it as an option in the code for primary zones in name servers, though.
We debated this for a long while. It turns out that a lot of applications don't check the results of the names they get back from gethostbyaddr(), and that the architecturally pure solution would have meant letting these older applications, and their users, burn. I wasn't willing to do that. There was a CERT advisory about sendmail's queue files and PTR RRs that included \n characters, but there was no CERT advisory about the various applications who expand DNS names on shell command lines. Yes, the authors of those scripts should be shot. (Especially whoever wrote Vixie Cron.) But something would have to be done about Java as well. And who knew what else? It was not worth skewering the universe to maintain the purity of the design. So, we put the checking in at several levels. Check out draft-andrews-dns-hostnames-03.txt for more info on this subject.