Linking to a website that has posted copyrighted content without permission is not illegal, an EU court has advised.

The case at hand dates back to 2011 when a Dutch website posted a link to an Australian data-storage website that featured nude photos of a popular television presenter. The photos were owned by Playboy and the Australian site did not have permission to host them. The Australian site agreed to remove them, but they popped up elsewhere on the Web, and each time they did, the Dutch website linked to them.

The photographs were eventually published legally in Playboy magazine a month later, but the Dutch site was sued for continually linking to sites that hosted them illegally.

This week, Advocate General Melchior Wathelet told the EU Court of Justice that the Dutch site was within its rights to post those links.

The court has yet to issue a final ruling. Wathelet's advice is non-binding, but the court normally follows such advice, according to Reuters. A ruling is expected later this year.

It is a landmark case for the EU court, which previously ruled that linking to copyrighted content and embedding copyrighted videos is allowed if the copyright holder publishes the content publicly. But this is the first time the court has dealt with links to content published illegally.

Factoring into Wathelet's decision was his belief that courts should not interfere with links that facilitate "the functioning of the Internet."

He pointed out that victims of copyright infringement can still take legal action against websites that host or publish the actual content. "It is obvious that the copyright holder may bring legal proceedings for infringement of his intellectual property rights against the person who effected the initial communication to the public without his authorization," he wrote.