The word unless is unfortunately superfluous in your statement. David Fincher just went through a grueling restoration process for Seven, and he talked about the process and basically said: Eastman Kodak has spent a lot of money to convince Hollywood that if your shoot on film and keep it in a vault that it will never degrade. It’s false.
I guess you could stave off the degradation by occasionally transferring the film to new media. But yeah, the unless is kind of superfluous there, even with frequent 'refreshing' film will eventually degrade.
