Actually, continuous harassment that has no purpose other than to annoy or verbally assault a person generally breaks harassment laws (from what I gather, the law varies from state to state). The case that you're exemplifying is aggravated harassment, which is pretty serious (possibly a felony, even), but it doesn't need to be that serious to be against the law.
Free speech only applies when there is a purpose other than assaulting another person. When you're only harassing someone for the sake of harassing the person, it actually is illegal. The problem is that it's not a serious enough offense for the police to investigate every single case (especially on gaming and the internet, where it's incredibly rampant AND anonymous), unless it's aggravated harassment. I'd imagine the police have more important matters to deal with than one person ruining the online experience of another, unfortunately.
I don't think the EC crew would mind; it was their idea, really. Making a new thread might not be a bad idea, though - go for it.