Nothing I’ve either seen or read of late would persuade me otherwise.
It sounds like the kind of scheme devised by your Aunt Molly, who just got an internet inside her computer at home and is looking things up on the Google.
Really, I thought AP might consider actually checking these things out before coming up with ludicrous ideas like DRM hardcoded into text. It sounds similar to what the Daily Mail does with copy and paste, no more.
Also worth reading is Steve Yelvington’s analysis. The hnews microformat is a great idea that “got sucked into the swirling vortex of panic and craziness that reigns at a lot of media companies these days,” he says.