Even though it's probably not a big deal to EFF, it's almost certainly a big deal to whoever is making money on other peoples' content. Not that I have noticed a problem on HN with this kind of thing before, but it seems it's the sort of thing that if it goes unchecked can potentially degrade quality given that HN would become a target for that sort of thing.
I personally wouldn't mind if a few of those articles didn't show up if the submitter was blocked, since it would only mean the submitter wasn't interested in doing the work to find the original source.
The EFF would be undermining their own credibility (not to mention that of free/open source licenses) if they were aware of this and choose to ignore it. I'd bet no one bothered reporting it, though.