My Environment:

Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional SP4
Dell Precision 650, Intel Xeon 2.4GHz, 1GB RAM
OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta (1.9.79)

Steps to reproduce issue:

1) Open or create a document containing a hyperlink.
2) Switch from activate to selection mode (on the Status Bar, click the HYP 
field).
3) Place the cursor inside a hyperlink in your text
4) Try to select a part of the hyperlink text with the mouse.  Note the cursor-
change to indicate a drag/drop operation.
5) Note that Writer begins a drag. 
6) Use the ESCAPE key to cancel the drag.

Word does not do this; in Word, drag-selection in a hyperlink does what you 
would expect, i.e. allows you to extend the selection by dragging.  I believe 
Writer should do this too, when 'activate' is switched off.

Strangely (and inconsistently), if you double-click a word in the hyperlink 
text, you *can* then extend the selection by dragging but, as you might expect, 
only in word-sized increments.

Workaround: place the cursor in the hyperlink text, hold down the SHIFT key and 
use the arrow keys.

Although you can work around this, it's a bug IMO, but I have reduced it to P4.