'...[A] Staunton [Virginia] man ... filed court papers last month in general district court demanding the city supply him with a list of words that trigger City Hall's filter software, a system that blocks e-mails containing words deemed offensive.

The "war of words" [No need for quotation marks.] began in August when Adrian Riskin, a mathematics professor at Mary Baldwin College, sent an e-mail to a friend working for the city. The e-mail contained the "F" word, was rejected and sent back to Riskin.

"This intrigued me," Riskin said Tuesday morning during a telephone interview. [Sign of a professor. We don't, as a rule, get angry. We don't get much of anything emotional. We get intrigued.]

The city has refused to supply Riskin with the list of forbidden words. After numerous e-mails from Riskin, where he tested various words that would trigger the city's software filter, City Hall finally blocked his e-mail address.

"I was just playing around," said Riskin, who said he was genuinely curious as to what words would slip through. [Again, no anger, no fighting city hall shit. He's curious.]

In the Sept. 27 court filing, Riskin said the city's rejection of his request for the list of offensive words is a denial of his Freedom of Information Act rights.

The city's filtering system is performed by the software program MailMarshal. The city claims the software is proprietary and excluded from the Freedom of Information Act. In his court filing, Riskin argued that the software can be edited and said if the city has altered the list it is no longer proprietary. Riskin further argued that if the city left the software as is, "it cannot possibly be proprietary since the software vendor provides it for a free download from their Web site."

In one of his e-mails, Riskin told the city that he is forming the organization of "Fathers for Uncensored Communicational Knowledge." The e-mail was blocked. [UD is falling in love.]

"Essentially, I'm just hounding them because they have no sense of humor," Riskin said.

City spokesman Doug Cochran, named in the court filing along with City Hall, said the MailMarshal software is in place to protect city employees from harassing e-mails and to control spam. Asked why the city wouldn't release the list in question, Cochran said licensing rights prevent the city from doing so.

Cochran also said the list of words that prompt the software to block e-mails was not altered by city officials.

"The list has not been edited," Cochran said.

A hearing in Staunton General District Court is scheduled Oct. 25.'