On June 24, 2003, U.S. Court of Appeals for the the Ninth Circuit held:
A service provider or user is immune from liability for defamatory or obscene speech, under 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1), when a third person or entity that created or developed the information in question, furnished it to the provider or user under circumstances in which a reasonable person would conclude that the information was "provided" for publication on the Internet or other 'interactive computer service.'

Essentially, a blogger enjoys statutory immunity when s/he posts a defamatory email contributed by someone whom the blogger believes intends the email to be posted to the blog.

Today, petition for rehearing en banc of the decision was denied.

Quoting from Circuit Judge Gould's dissent from denial of rehearing:

"There should be little doubt, given ordinary usage that Congress presumably intended, that a publisher's affirmative choice to select certain information for publication for the first time on the Internet "develops" that information. To put the point more concretely, imagine a defamatory e-mail sent to both an on-line bulletin board for appellate litigation and to a popular appellate litigation blog. Let us say, for example, that the e-mail falsely stated that Judge X of the Y Circuit was paid by Z to render decisions in Z’s favor. If the blogger decides to publish the e-mail, there is something qualitatively different about the e-mail as published on the appellate blog, as contrasted with the one posted on the bulletin board. The blogger's conscious decision to publish an e-mail would add, by virtue of his or her reputation and that of the blog, a layer of credibility and endorsement that would be lacking from the e-mail merely posted to the bulletin board. And being the first person to post the defamatory material on the Internet would be a novel presentation of the defamatory material."