Oh, I've got a rough idea, and I'm pretty sure "pop culture" utterly swamps it in terms of demand.
You would not make such an ignorant claim if you really did know. I am talking about pop culture. Ask anyone under 35 in Taiwan, Hong Kong, any major city of Mainland China, Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, etc what "My Sassy Girl" refers to, and they will know either the movie, the tv series or both. The same goes for dozens of other tv series and hundreds of other movies over just the last few years. Such non-MPAA entertainment is so widespread and common that just last year, Taiwan's senate debated a bill banning dramas that weren't made in country from prime-time broadcasts, because they were dominating the airwaves. A third of the USA speaks spanish - they, and rest of latin america have similarly prodigious entertainment industries - just barely crossing over in the English-speaking world now with remakes like "Ugly Betty." Then there is bollywood, responsible for 2x the number of films that hollywood makes each year and 10x the number of ticket sales among the billion+ population of India. Everyone knows hollywood, but hollywood does not even come close to ruling the world of pop entertainment. Maybe 50 years ago they did, but not any more, not even close.
"Specifically, what content are you talking about" is such a simple question. Why are you so reluctant to answer it ? What DRM-infested video have you got that plays back at full quality in XP but not in Vista ?
WTF? What part of HD-DVD editions of PowerDVD and WinDVD did you not understand? Have you really been hitting on this point over and over because you couldn't understand that means EVERY SINGLE HD-DVD CURRENTLY AVAILABLE, ALL 200+? That's your big deal? The one that I trashed in my second post? I thought your wording was strange, it just turns out that yet again, you don't know what the hell you are talking about.
You are seriously ignorant - you have no concept of how vista's DRM is implemented, you only know the BS that hollywood feeds you about their self-importance in the market and the inevitability of wide-spread DRM -- hook, line and sinker. *I* know the hollywood line, I don't need you to repeat it over and over. You need to get past it yourself and realize that the world is not anywhere near the way hollywood paints it.
Are you seriously trying to suggest the current media oligopoly's market position could be threatened in the near future ?
What part of "someone will meet that demand" do you disbelieve? And why is it that you disbelieve it for media and not for hardware? You know nothing about international entertainment, where the producers are not the MPAA and yet are so popular that their products routinely cross language, social and ethnic barriers for tens of millions of viewers.
Because if they don't, their products won't sell in the massive consumerist societies of the western world, where DRM-encumbered content is going to be the norm in around a decade and on "premium content" (the stuff that drives sales of fancy new equipment) much sooner.
Prove it. Just what "premium content" is it?
*That's* assuming laws like the DCMA even give them the option of selling DRM-less hardware in the future.
Those laws exist today, yet the chinese are busted so rarely that it makes news when it happens CSS and macrovision are just as DMCA worthy as AACS, as 2600 can attest.
Yes, there is.
Name it. You are so convinced of it, lets see it. Here's your bone:
I'll tell you right now that it isn't the content on HD and BD that won't play back, it is the hardware. The hardware without fully-implemented secure path drivers will not render it all. But on XP it renders it just fine.
As I keep saying, revenue from selling business desktops, servers, embedded devices and the like is completely and utterly irrelevant if you're trying to compare to, say, DVD players and set top boxes.
You keep saying it, it is still stupid. Its the equivalent of saying that if Mercedes-Benz wants to start building electric cars, that they have to cater to the whims of the battery manufacturers when in reality its the battery manufacturers that need to figure out how to make their product attractive to Mercedes.
The "someone" who will "meet the need" if platforms like Vista don't have DRM will be the same ones that are meeting most of it now - standalone DVD players and the like churned out by the boatload from China.
I am stunned that you would so wilfully misunderstand my point as to confuse content creators with hardware manufacturers. But just to humor you - why do you think those chinese manufacturers are going to give two shits about DRM? They don't even pay the $20/unit patent royalties on the DVD players they manufacture by the boatload today and it is standard for them to include overrides for the DRM of DVDs - macrovision disable, region-coding disable, no-skip disable.
Because it nullifies any criticism you can make with regards to Vista, DRM, output degredation and currently available content. If Vista plays DRM-encumbered media _today_ at full quality, then its "output degredation" is irrelevant to today's content.
I get it now -- You don't have a clue how vista works. That's why you keep waving meangingless points around. Figure out how PVP-OPM, PVP-UAB, PUMA and PAP work and their side-effects and then you might understand how they are bad. Here's a big hint - the BD/HD versions of WinDVD and PowerDVD work differently under vista than they do under XP. Same programs, different code paths. There is no "NOW" media vs "IN THE FUTURE" media - it is all blu-ray and hd-dvd.
Maybe you need to tell the "computer industry" that, because some pretty major players seem to think it is, judging by the way they're aggressively trying to expand into that market space.
So, what? Your premise was that it HAD to be done that there was no "actual alternative of a "full-quality experience" _without_ DRM-capable software and hardware." You've now backtracked to "some pretty major players" in the computer industry think it had to be done. Which is my entire point - they think it because they are suckers. Their own revenues show that it isn't necessary.
However, if they _do_ want to expand into the marketspace, they most certainly do. You can't have a content platform without the co-operation of the people selling the content.
Really? That must be why mp3 players were selling for nearly a decade before there was any significant buy in from the "people selling the content." The way it works is - if there is demand, SOMEONE will meet it. If the established players aren't willing to do so, then new ones will jump in instead. Content creators, their entire product being discretionary, need the buyers to survive, the buyers don't need the content to survive.
WTF ? Practically your whole argument is revolves around the fact that Vista degrades output quality to meet DRM restriction requirements imposed by the media companies, yet here you are saying such degredation of output "would not matter".
As your position degrades you keep trying to twist the argument into something neither you nor I originally said. I said it "would not matter" for the purposes of effective DRM.
Your whole premise is wrong. Vista doesn't "downgrade the user experience", it plays content at a lower quality, in lieu of not playing it at all.
I want to know what content you have, now, that will allow this in WinDVD (or similar), but not in Vista.
So what if it STILL works under Vista? What kind of bizarro argument is that? The point is Vista is NOT NECESSARY. The XP environment was good enough for hollywood, thus all the extra crap in Vista was just MS deciding to screw over the paying customers for the non-paying ones.
Not where that market overlaps with Hollywood & co. they haven't. What proportion of people do you think have HTPCs ? I'd be surprised if it was even a single-digit percentage of people who owned TVs.
And your point is apparently that this lack of uptake is significant. It ain't. The computer industry got where it is today - an order of magnitude larger than hollywood - without playing their game. They do not need hollywood.
Computers aren't a big platform in Hollywood content consumption _now_, but it's pretty fucking obvious to everyone that's where they're headed. Hence the interest from big media in making sure they're not allowed to be as flexible in the future as they currently are (they started about 5-10 years too late, but they're getting up to speed quite quickly).
So which is it? Hollywood thinks computers are important or hollywood doesn't think computers are important? You've now made arguments for both sides.
You can play HD-DVD, Blu-ray or otherwise DRMed content at full quality using non-DRM-encumbered hardware and those applications that won't play in a similar fashion on Vista ? Examples, please.
Your awkward phrasing suggests you are trying to put words in my mouth apparently in an attempt at willful misunderstanding, yet that same awkward phrasing makes it impossible to figure out just what point you are trying to make. My point is very clear - WinDVD and PowerDVD HD/BD editions do not require Vista nor do they require Vista-level DRM in order to play back at full resolution. Ergo, Vista-level DRM is not necessary to convince Hollywood to 'allow' playback of HD content.
Furthermore, it would not matter if full resolution was or was not visible - the full resolution must be decoded before it can be down-scaled, the formats do not support anything even remotely resembling the selective decryption that would be necessary to only decode a low resolution version, so vulnerability of low-versus-high resolution is a moot point. It is all or nothing. Hollywood chose the all, even without Vista.
This, however, is a false dichotomy. The point of discussion is _consuming content_ and why Hollywood has more say about how it is done than the computer industry.
No, the point of discussion is that the computer industry has done just fine without them so far. I've clearly drunk the kool-aid since I believe that if computers aren't a big platform in the first place, hollywood wouldn't give two shits either way -- just look how Universal got their DRM wet-dream on the Zune and STILL didn't play the game.
Both of those programs similarly require DRM-laden hardware to play back at full quality and (as alluded to on Cyberlink's website, at least) possibly to play back at all.
You speak from ignorance. I've used both and don't have the drm issues you want to believe in, and even in the worst case scenario, the requirements are NO WHERE NEAR THE SAME AS VISTA.
Take out the revenue generated from servers, business desktops, embedded devices and other such things which have zero relevance to the comparison.
Why does it have zero relevance? Not everything hollywood produces is HD either. In fact, until the last few years, hardly anything was HD. The point is to illustrate which industry is more important to the US economy and thus more 'deserving' of special treatment.
The impact on Hollywood of computers not being able to play hi-def content would be negligible,
This line of argument is pretty much a dead end. The reason is that there are at least two commercially available HD software players from Intervideo and Cyberlink that will play both HD and BD on non-vista systems at full resolution. If Hollywood needed PCs less than PCs needed hollywood, they would never have licensed Intervideo and Cyberlink to run on systems without vista's boatload of drm.
Simply because the computer industry has nothing that the MPAA members need.
Which explains why youtube is a flash in the pan, as is all the p2p sharing of movies that we hear about at the start of every single movie shown in the theater nowadays.
when realistically the only choices are a blank screen or copyright (/DMCA) violations.
US computer industry yearly revenue - ~$300B+ MPAA member yearly revenue - ~$50B.
Just why do you think that an industry that is at least 6x larger does not have a realistic chance of forcing hollywood to capitulate rather than the other way around?
All by itself MS is roughly equal to hollywood en toto. Then add in the rest of the American computer industry - HP, Dell, Intel, AMD, etc and Hollywood becomes a midget. In terms of what industry is more important to the US economy, Hollywood is clearly the ones who ought to bend over and take it, not the other way around.
Of course, there are many nutjobs (rhymes with star-heft-miberals) that will always look at big business with shifty eyes.
And apparently there will always be a nutjob that rhymes with moehoward who will insert random attacks on his preferred group to hate so that when he does actually make a good point, reasonable people will wonder if he really is insightful or just lucky in the same way that a broken watch still tells the correct time twice a day.
Gamasutra has a piece up from earlier this week, with some late New Year's resolutions for the games industry.
1920x1080
1280x720
2560x1600 (but only if they have time to get around to it)
Re:If the Republicans own the elections...
on
Who won?
·
· Score: 1
Did they forget to press the "cheat" button,
Maybe the Democrats figured out how to press the "cheat" button too. After all, it only takes money and both parties have tons of that.
Democrats lost in 2004 because they had a crappy candidate, and let the republicans control the debate. Get over it already.
Truly insightful expert analysis on your part. Who cares about analysis and research, go with that gut. After all, there is nothing more truthy than your gut!
Another one is China: they don't even care about DRM. But who produces most of electronics? Who sets the prices?
If China doesn't care about DRM - why have both their attempts to compete with HD-BLU-DVD-RAY included DRM? First, the apparently dying on the vine EVD and now the HD-FVD system?
Improving efficiency is within the scope of anybody's job. The software the officer developed is directly related to what he does everyday, and was developed for that purpose.
Are you really so disconnected from reality that you think all cops should also be programmers as a regular part of their job?
If his employer agreed to pay him while doing it, and he agreed to do it while being payed, doesn't that make it ipso facto his job?
The difference is in being hired for one thing and then asked to do another thing. As a cop, his job description is not "whatever his boss asks him to do" - it is to do cop stuff. Programming is not normal cop stuff.
Since he is being asked to do stuff that is not part of his normal duties, he might as well be someone with no normal duties - i.e. a freelancer - in the context of this extra work.
Likewise clearly the employer is in business to create such works. They employed someone to do so.
The police are generally not considered a software development powerhouse. Just because they did a one-off doesn't make it a regular thing for them.
You are looking at this all in retrospect, saying that what they are is defined by what they did. But time flows forward, the cop's job was not software development when he was hired and his department did not develop software when he started working on it for them.
US copyright law specifically lists "a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment" as a fundamental condition that establishes a "work for hire".
See Non-Violence v. Reid, U.S. Supreme Court, June 5, 1989 in which it is determined that "scope of employment" is a well-defined term of art used in the context of common-law agency.
Then see: Restatement (Second) Agency 228-229; United States v. Smith, 810 F.2d 996 (10th Cir. 1987). Other factors which may be considered are whether: 1) it is the kind of work the person is employed to perform; 2) the work occurs substantially within work hours; and 3) the work is actuated, at least in part, by a purpose to serve the employer. Restatement (Second) Agency, 228; Nimmer on Copyright p. 5-33 (1997).
Where in this case #1 can be reasonably argued to not apply - the guy is a cop who has officially received training in the use of the original software in order to perform his duty. But he has not officially received training, nor been hired, as a programmer. Furthermore, according to the guy's claims of significant uncompensated hours, #2 may not hold either.
Slashdot Mirror
Rule of thumb: "Think Tank" is just a misleadingly fancy word for PR firm.
Oh, I've got a rough idea, and I'm pretty sure "pop culture" utterly swamps it in terms of demand.
You would not make such an ignorant claim if you really did know. I am talking about pop culture. Ask anyone under 35 in Taiwan, Hong Kong, any major city of Mainland China, Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, etc what "My Sassy Girl" refers to, and they will know either the movie, the tv series or both. The same goes for dozens of other tv series and hundreds of other movies over just the last few years. Such non-MPAA entertainment is so widespread and common that just last year, Taiwan's senate debated a bill banning dramas that weren't made in country from prime-time broadcasts, because they were dominating the airwaves. A third of the USA speaks spanish - they, and rest of latin america have similarly prodigious entertainment industries - just barely crossing over in the English-speaking world now with remakes like "Ugly Betty." Then there is bollywood, responsible for 2x the number of films that hollywood makes each year and 10x the number of ticket sales among the billion+ population of India. Everyone knows hollywood, but hollywood does not even come close to ruling the world of pop entertainment. Maybe 50 years ago they did, but not any more, not even close.
"Specifically, what content are you talking about" is such a simple question. Why are you so reluctant to answer it ? What DRM-infested video have you got that plays back at full quality in XP but not in Vista ?
WTF? What part of HD-DVD editions of PowerDVD and WinDVD did you not understand? Have you really been hitting on this point over and over because you couldn't understand that means EVERY SINGLE HD-DVD CURRENTLY AVAILABLE, ALL 200+? That's your big deal? The one that I trashed in my second post? I thought your wording was strange, it just turns out that yet again, you don't know what the hell you are talking about.
You are seriously ignorant - you have no concept of how vista's DRM is implemented, you only know the BS that hollywood feeds you about their self-importance in the market and the inevitability of wide-spread DRM -- hook, line and sinker. *I* know the hollywood line, I don't need you to repeat it over and over. You need to get past it yourself and realize that the world is not anywhere near the way hollywood paints it.
Are you seriously trying to suggest the current media oligopoly's market position could be threatened in the near future ?
What part of "someone will meet that demand" do you disbelieve? And why is it that you disbelieve it for media and not for hardware? You know nothing about international entertainment, where the producers are not the MPAA and yet are so popular that their products routinely cross language, social and ethnic barriers for tens of millions of viewers.
Because if they don't, their products won't sell in the massive consumerist societies of the western world, where DRM-encumbered content is going to be the norm in around a decade and on "premium content" (the stuff that drives sales of fancy new equipment) much sooner.
Prove it. Just what "premium content" is it?
*That's* assuming laws like the DCMA even give them the option of selling DRM-less hardware in the future.
Those laws exist today, yet the chinese are busted so rarely that it makes news when it happens CSS and macrovision are just as DMCA worthy as AACS, as 2600 can attest.
Yes, there is.
Name it. You are so convinced of it, lets see it. Here's your bone:
I'll tell you right now that it isn't the content on HD and BD that won't play back, it is the hardware. The hardware without fully-implemented secure path drivers will not render it all. But on XP it renders it just fine.
As I keep saying, revenue from selling business desktops, servers, embedded devices and the like is completely and utterly irrelevant if you're trying to compare to, say, DVD players and set top boxes.
You keep saying it, it is still stupid. Its the equivalent of saying that if Mercedes-Benz wants to start building electric cars, that they have to cater to the whims of the battery manufacturers when in reality its the battery manufacturers that need to figure out how to make their product attractive to Mercedes.
The "someone" who will "meet the need" if platforms like Vista don't have DRM will be the same ones that are meeting most of it now - standalone DVD players and the like churned out by the boatload from China.
I am stunned that you would so wilfully misunderstand my point as to confuse content creators with hardware manufacturers. But just to humor you - why do you think those chinese manufacturers are going to give two shits about DRM? They don't even pay the $20/unit patent royalties on the DVD players they manufacture by the boatload today and it is standard for them to include overrides for the DRM of DVDs - macrovision disable, region-coding disable, no-skip disable.
Because it nullifies any criticism you can make with regards to Vista, DRM, output degredation and currently available content. If Vista plays DRM-encumbered media _today_ at full quality, then its "output degredation" is irrelevant to today's content.
I get it now -- You don't have a clue how vista works. That's why you keep waving meangingless points around. Figure out how PVP-OPM, PVP-UAB, PUMA and PAP work and their side-effects and then you might understand how they are bad. Here's a big hint - the BD/HD versions of WinDVD and PowerDVD work differently under vista than they do under XP. Same programs, different code paths. There is no "NOW" media vs "IN THE FUTURE" media - it is all blu-ray and hd-dvd.
So, what? Your premise was that it HAD to be done that there was no "actual alternative of a "full-quality experience" _without_ DRM-capable software and hardware." You've now backtracked to "some pretty major players" in the computer industry think it had to be done. Which is my entire point - they think it because they are suckers. Their own revenues show that it isn't necessary.
However, if they _do_ want to expand into the marketspace, they most certainly do. You can't have a content platform without the co-operation of the people selling the content.
Really? That must be why mp3 players were selling for nearly a decade before there was any significant buy in from the "people selling the content." The way it works is - if there is demand, SOMEONE will meet it. If the established players aren't willing to do so, then new ones will jump in instead. Content creators, their entire product being discretionary, need the buyers to survive, the buyers don't need the content to survive.
WTF ? Practically your whole argument is revolves around the fact that Vista degrades output quality to meet DRM restriction requirements imposed by the media companies, yet here you are saying such degredation of output "would not matter".
As your position degrades you keep trying to twist the argument into something neither you nor I originally said. I said it "would not matter" for the purposes of effective DRM.
I want to know what content you have, now, that will allow this in WinDVD (or similar), but not in Vista.
So what if it STILL works under Vista? What kind of bizarro argument is that? The point is Vista is NOT NECESSARY. The XP environment was good enough for hollywood, thus all the extra crap in Vista was just MS deciding to screw over the paying customers for the non-paying ones.
Not where that market overlaps with Hollywood & co. they haven't. What proportion of people do you think have HTPCs ? I'd be surprised if it was even a single-digit percentage of people who owned TVs.
And your point is apparently that this lack of uptake is significant. It ain't. The computer industry got where it is today - an order of magnitude larger than hollywood - without playing their game. They do not need hollywood.
Computers aren't a big platform in Hollywood content consumption _now_, but it's pretty fucking obvious to everyone that's where they're headed. Hence the interest from big media in making sure they're not allowed to be as flexible in the future as they currently are (they started about 5-10 years too late, but they're getting up to speed quite quickly).
So which is it? Hollywood thinks computers are important or hollywood doesn't think computers are important? You've now made arguments for both sides.
You can play HD-DVD, Blu-ray or otherwise DRMed content at full quality using non-DRM-encumbered hardware and those applications that won't play in a similar fashion on Vista ? Examples, please.
Your awkward phrasing suggests you are trying to put words in my mouth apparently in an attempt at willful misunderstanding, yet that same awkward phrasing makes it impossible to figure out just what point you are trying to make. My point is very clear - WinDVD and PowerDVD HD/BD editions do not require Vista nor do they require Vista-level DRM in order to play back at full resolution. Ergo, Vista-level DRM is not necessary to convince Hollywood to 'allow' playback of HD content.
Furthermore, it would not matter if full resolution was or was not visible - the full resolution must be decoded before it can be down-scaled, the formats do not support anything even remotely resembling the selective decryption that would be necessary to only decode a low resolution version, so vulnerability of low-versus-high resolution is a moot point. It is all or nothing. Hollywood chose the all, even without Vista.
This, however, is a false dichotomy. The point of discussion is _consuming content_ and why Hollywood has more say about how it is done than the computer industry.
No, the point of discussion is that the computer industry has done just fine without them so far. I've clearly drunk the kool-aid since I believe that if computers aren't a big platform in the first place, hollywood wouldn't give two shits either way -- just look how Universal got their DRM wet-dream on the Zune and STILL didn't play the game.
Both of those programs similarly require DRM-laden hardware to play back at full quality and (as alluded to on Cyberlink's website, at least) possibly to play back at all.
You speak from ignorance. I've used both and don't have the drm issues you want to believe in, and even in the worst case scenario, the requirements are NO WHERE NEAR THE SAME AS VISTA.
Take out the revenue generated from servers, business desktops, embedded devices and other such things which have zero relevance to the comparison.
Why does it have zero relevance? Not everything hollywood produces is HD either. In fact, until the last few years, hardly anything was HD. The point is to illustrate which industry is more important to the US economy and thus more 'deserving' of special treatment.
The impact on Hollywood of computers not being able to play hi-def content would be negligible,
This line of argument is pretty much a dead end. The reason is that there are at least two commercially available HD software players from Intervideo and Cyberlink that will play both HD and BD on non-vista systems at full resolution. If Hollywood needed PCs less than PCs needed hollywood, they would never have licensed Intervideo and Cyberlink to run on systems without vista's boatload of drm.
Simply because the computer industry has nothing that the MPAA members need.
Which explains why youtube is a flash in the pan, as is all the p2p sharing of movies that we hear about at the start of every single movie shown in the theater nowadays.
when realistically the only choices are a blank screen or copyright (/DMCA) violations.
US computer industry yearly revenue - ~$300B+
MPAA member yearly revenue - ~$50B.
Just why do you think that an industry that is at least 6x larger does not have a realistic chance of forcing hollywood to capitulate rather than the other way around?
If it weren't for Microsoft handing over our rights to the them on a silver platter, it would be the RIAA and MPAA bending over to the people instead!
Indeed. Compare the size of hollywood (the six major studios combined) with Microsoft:
Hollywood fiscal 2004 revenue: $44.8 billion
Microsoft fiscal 2005 revenue: $41.3 billion
All by itself MS is roughly equal to hollywood en toto. Then add in the rest of the American computer industry - HP, Dell, Intel, AMD, etc and Hollywood becomes a midget. In terms of what industry is more important to the US economy, Hollywood is clearly the ones who ought to bend over and take it, not the other way around.
Real men use cat and a directory with one file for each possible note.
you forgot that they are probably working on Wall St
Or Washington, DC.
Tell us more of these "girls" you speak of.
Pics?
You know, the stuff that the "legit" music distributors are supposed to provide.
Of course, there are many nutjobs (rhymes with star-heft-miberals) that will always look at big business with shifty eyes.
And apparently there will always be a nutjob that rhymes with moehoward who will insert random attacks on his preferred group to hate so that when he does actually make a good point, reasonable people will wonder if he really is insightful or just lucky in the same way that a broken watch still tells the correct time twice a day.
Monster Lo-Carb
Although the new Rockstar Zero Carb "with twice as much caffeine" in the blue can has been growing on me this week.
Did they forget to press the "cheat" button,
Maybe the Democrats figured out how to press the "cheat" button too.
After all, it only takes money and both parties have tons of that.
Democrats lost in 2004 because they had a crappy candidate, and let the republicans control the debate. Get over it already.
Truly insightful expert analysis on your part. Who cares about analysis and research, go with that gut. After all, there is nothing more truthy than your gut!
that the product of his labor was directly related to his job, gives good reason for the software to be considered a work for hire.
Keep saying it enough times and maybe you can rewrite case law.
Another one is China: they don't even care about DRM. But who produces most of electronics? Who sets the prices?
If China doesn't care about DRM - why have both their attempts to compete with HD-BLU-DVD-RAY included DRM? First, the apparently dying on the vine EVD and now the HD-FVD system?
Improving efficiency is within the scope of anybody's job. The software the officer developed is directly related to what he does everyday, and was developed for that purpose.
Are you really so disconnected from reality that you think all cops should also be programmers as a regular part of their job?
If his employer agreed to pay him while doing it, and he agreed to do it while being payed, doesn't that make it ipso facto his job?
The difference is in being hired for one thing and then asked to do another thing. As a cop, his job description is not "whatever his boss asks him to do" - it is to do cop stuff. Programming is not normal cop stuff.
Since he is being asked to do stuff that is not part of his normal duties, he might as well be someone with no normal duties - i.e. a freelancer - in the context of this extra work.
Likewise clearly the employer is in business to create such works. They employed someone to do so.
The police are generally not considered a software development powerhouse. Just because they did a one-off doesn't make it a regular thing for them.
You are looking at this all in retrospect, saying that what they are is defined by what they did. But time flows forward, the cop's job was not software development when he was hired and his department did not develop software when he started working on it for them.
US copyright law specifically lists "a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment" as a fundamental condition that establishes a "work for hire".
See Non-Violence v. Reid, U.S. Supreme Court, June 5, 1989 in which it is determined that "scope of employment" is a well-defined term of art used in the context of common-law agency.
Then see:
Restatement (Second) Agency 228-229; United States v. Smith, 810 F.2d 996 (10th Cir. 1987). Other factors which may be considered are whether: 1) it is the kind of work the person is employed to perform; 2) the work occurs substantially within work hours; and 3) the work is actuated, at least in part, by a purpose to serve the employer. Restatement (Second) Agency, 228; Nimmer on Copyright p. 5-33 (1997).
Where in this case #1 can be reasonably argued to not apply - the guy is a cop who has officially received training in the use of the original software in order to perform his duty. But he has not officially received training, nor been hired, as a programmer. Furthermore, according to the guy's claims of significant uncompensated hours, #2 may not hold either.