From the actual ruling: <i>"Weltimmo, a company registered in Slovakia, runs a property dealing website concerning Hungarian properties. For that purpose, it processes the personal data of the advertisers. The advertisements are free of charge for one month but thereafter a fee is payable. Many advertisers sent a request by e-mail for the deletion of both their advertisements and their personal data as from that period. However, Weltimmo did not delete those data and charged the interested parties for the price of its services. As the amounts charged were not paid, Weltimmo forwarded the personal data of the advertisers concerned to debt collection agencies.</i>" In other words, a typical slimeball-type refusal-to-cancel scam.<p>This was an action which fell under the European Privacy Directive, which is EC-wide but implemented by different laws in different countries. All countries involved are EC countries.<p>This sort of thing comes up all the time in the US, where courts have to deal with companies from another state.