In Jones v. Dirty World Entm't Recordings, et al., the US Court of Appeals for Sixth Circuit held that the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) (47 U.S.C. § 230) barred plaintiff-appellee Sarah Jones's state defamation claims against the operators of a website for posts about Jones uploaded by an anonymous user (No. 13–5946, (6th Cir. Jun. 16, 2014)). In a case of first impression in the Sixth Circuit, the court adopted the material contribution test to determine when an interactive computer service provider loses CDA immunity because it is responsible for the creation or development of the tortious information. The decision brings the Sixth Circuit in line with the Ninth Circuit and other circuit courts that have ruled on this issue.

The case involved defamatory postings made about Sarah Jones, an individual, on the website www.TheDirty.com, a website operated by Nik Lamas-Richie and Dirty World LLC. The website allows users to submit "dirt" or content including text, photographs or video about any subject and post comments. The majority of the content on the site is made up of submissions uploaded directly by third-party users. The content submission form instructs users to "Tell us what's happening. Remember to tell us who, what, when, where, why" and requires users to submit a title and category for their submission, and their city or college for indexing. Submissions appear on the site as though a single, anonymous author, "The Dirty Army," wrote them. Richie or his staff selects and edits approximately 150 to 200 submissions out of thousands for publication each day and briefly reviews them to remove nudity, obscenity, threats of violence, profanity and racial slurs. Richie typically adds a short, one-line comment about the post with some sort of humorous or satirical observation but does not materially change, create or modify any part of the user-generated submission or check for accuracy.

Richie and Dirty World appealed to Sixth Circuit after the US District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky rejected their argument that Section 230 barred Jones's claims of defamation, libel per se, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress and defendants' motion to dismiss, motion for summary judgment, motion to revise judgment and motion for judgment as a matter of law.

On appeal, the issue turned on whether Richie and Dirty World were responsible in whole or in part for the development or creation of the defamatory posts, which would limit their immunity under Section 230. The appellate court rejected the district court's finding that a website owner that intentionally encourages illegal or actionable third-party postings to which he adds his own comments ratifying or adopting the posts becomes a creator or developer of that content and is not entitled to immunity. Instead, the Sixth Circuit adopted the material contribution test set out by the Ninth Circuit in Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.Com, LLC, which concluded that "developing" the defamatory content does not refer to merely supplementing the content generally but to materially contributing to its alleged unlawfulness (521 F.3d 1157 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc)). In this case, the appellate court concluded that Richie and Dirty World did not materially contribute to the defamatory content of the posts merely by: