Hatcher states that copyright law does not condone fansubs. The Berne Convention, international copyright treaty, states that its signatories—including Japan—grant authors exclusive right to translation. Hatcher states that fansubs could "potentially" be legal within Japan given the nature of Japan's domestic copyright laws, although the target audience of fansubs is the non-Japanese market. However Hatcher states that copyright law in the United States—the frame of reference for most online discussions of fansub legality—construes translations as derivative, and fansubs infringe on the author's right to prepare derivative works and to reproduction by copying original source material.