Disney's Park Rules Text Can't Be Selected by Mouse | Hacker News Reader

Disney's Park Rules Text Can't Be Selected by Mouse

disneyworld.disney.go.com

29 pointscoryfklein30 comments

Headline is unclear: I originally thought "rules text can't be selected by Mouse" == "Mickey Mouse is not allowed to make the rules." :)

I read it as, "Disney's Park Rules¹ [that] Text Can't Be Selected by Mouse"

¹: like a judge issues a ruling or decision

I was so sure I was the only one who read it that way that I wasn't even going to bother commenting about it.

The page is setting the CSS user-select properties to "none". You can unset it using you browser's dev tools.

See https://www.w3schools.com/cssreF/css3_pr_user-select.asp

let me fix that link for you: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/user-select

This shows why I still prefer W3Schools.

What does? The fact that W3Schools only lists a subset of the possible values? That it just has a single "compatibility" row instead of listing browser compatibility for the various different possible values? Or is it just the fact that they put the example at the top of the page instead of putting it below the formal documentation?

The real question is why browsers, which are supposed to be literal user agents, implement these regressive antifeatures in the first place?

According to the csswg[1] for this, it was supposed to be used selectively for adjacent decorative elements that can interfere with the selection of normal content. Of course it actually is used for screwing with the user but what can you do?

[1]https://drafts.csswg.org/css-ui-4/#propdef-user-select

It’s an incredibly useful feature for UI elements.

I can't seem to find that element in my case: https://i.imgur.com/Hu6YFIo.png

view > page style > no style

I have the Selectable Chrome extension installed (since fanfiction.net does the same thing and I like to randomly highlight while I read), which fixes this problem.

Alternate headline (for those who were confused, as I was): Disney has disabled user selection of the 'Park Rules' text on their website [link to page in question]

Interestingly, there's a print button on the top right which, when clicked, brings up another window that you can print from. I was able to copy the text from that.

I just don't get why do this?

Totally uninformed speculation: some lawyer dreamt up a scenario where someone copied-and-pasted the rules into a text editor, edited them, and then claimed in litigation that the edited version was the version that was presented to them. (Or maybe this actually happened!)

Slightly less uninformed speculation: Some designer doesn't "like" the I-bar cursor, and selection highlights, and decided it was "prettier" for the page to avoid user selection.

Given how general the class name is that includes the user-select: none rule (.scroll-container), this seems like a design idea by some component system designer rather than anything specific to this particular page.

Yea, this is the most likely explanation. Or at least simplified to what a developer would use the commit message of "Appease the insane demands by the Legal Dept".

Most aren't technically save and realize that things like no select or no right click are super easy to bypass. Heck, I'm sure 99% of HN readers could simply open up the inspect panel and edit the HTML directly. Screenshot and BAM, look.. Disney TOS "hacked".

999 lawyers out of 1000 wouldn't even be aware that no-select or no-right click are possible and I can't think of any potential legal risks that this would mitigate.

Edit: The text selection is also turned off on (most of) their terms & conditions.[1] I guess the park has one of those thousand lawyers because it certainly seems like the legal department is behind it.

[1] https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/park-experience-terms-cond...

Did you mean "savvy" and not "save"?

Having dealt with Disney corporate people before, this is not an invalid theory.

Probably just to lower the 'supply' on the supply/demand curve for possible things that could embarrass Disney.

The things that go viral on Twitter are not quite controlled by anyone, they're like waves of interest and outrage that build up and quell down.

For example, some utterly random, innocuous thing might, in an instant be considered 'out of bounds'. La Sorbonne's enactment of Greek tragedies with Black and White masks are now facing charges of racism, for example. It's a rhetorical stretch, but so many things are today. It just took the right combination of voices to make it 'a thing'. In one of the pamplets, an actress was wearing black makeup, apparently not part of the performance, but that imagery was the fodder for the virality and verbal arguments (i.e. 'they wear masks not makeup) has less value.

By simply removing the cut and paste, you cut down on the number of casual bloggers, viewers etc. who grab the data and jam it in a tweet or something else.

Obviously, anyone who really wants it can get it, after all it's public.

But I can see why from a PR and legal perspective they did this on purpose, it's not hard to fathom. It also might simply be the choice of the dev. And it's odd that it's a discussion point as well!

Boy, this went places.

Maybe it's to prevent stale copies of the rules from floating around places. I doubt it works since folks can screenshot it or type it out manually.

Similarly, when copying and pasting text from the WSJ website, you get unnecessary dashes within the text. Like this: "Tra-di-tion-ally, lenders have re-quired a borrower to mail things like W2s"

I bet those dashes indicate how to break the words up for all different window sizes.

I get si-milar dashes - and wordsunexpectedly clumped together - when selecting text from LaTeX-formatted PDF documents too.

I use StopTheMadness with Mac safari so this text is selectable (and forms entries are passable etc)

I bet Mickey Mouse can select it!

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