i've been a highlight-reader for as long as I can remember. It irks me when there's a widget that does this, or if the text is in an image. It gives me nothing to 'hold on' to!!

Great reason to use NoScript or ScriptSafe, since it kills things like this. I hadn't even noticed the problem.

NoScript is overkill but I wish there was a way to disable certain API entirely without disabling javascript as a whole. In this case I'd really like to disable window.getSelection() and document.selection, as usually sites using those are either up to no good or .. as awful as the original link.

You can, just have a plugin that redefines the function to do nothing. I've only seen it on scripts that try to punish hotlinking by doing things like making console.log do nothing or redefining false to true, as it's obviously an example of worst practices.