Larry Urbanski is the Executive Director of the American Film Heritage Association, a non-profit film preservation group, and the President of Moviecraft, Inc., a commercial film archive. The American Film Heritage Association was established to represent documentary film makers, film preservationists, scholars, commercial archives and non-profit archives dedicated to opposing copyright term extension laws because of their significant adverse effects on movie preservation. Older films, such as those from the 1920's and 1930's, are constantly deteriorating and in need of restoration.
Orphan Works make up a significant portion of our silent film heritage.
Therefore, if a surviving print of one of these works is discovered by a commercial film archive such as Moviecraft, it will not be restored since the archive cannot exploit the restored film. Moviecraft had originally planned to restore this film when it was scheduled to enter the public domain at the end of 1999. As highlighted by the experience of Moviecraft, the Copyright Term Extension Act threatens to keep many films out of the public domain forever. The physical decomposition of nitrate films could mean that future generations will never view primary works of American cinema. Even today's film stocks are not immune to problems of dye fading and disintegration.