Well, the latter has always been the case since day 1 back in the 90's.
What I see as AP's play here is that they want to use the threat of lawsuits to remove competition to portals that they want to run themselves. In essence, double-dipping. Get revenue from any aggregation and then get revenue from the articles views themselves.
However, their sabre rattling would imply they want to destroy the foundation of the internet - the ability to reference other material elsewhere under long-established fair-use laws. Personally, I don't think that dog will hunt, but like Getty Images and the RIAA - small guys won't have the cash to hire lawyers to defend themselves against suits from the AP.
Which, probably means we need to go to an LLC here fairly soon.