Software Piracy Forensics: A Proposal for Incorporating Dead Codes and Other Programming Blunders as Important Evidence in AFC Test.

Dead code, which is not uncommon in software engineering, is an unexplored area in software piracy forensics. This paper primarily investigates the forensic importance of all programming blunders, including dead codes. Programming Blunder is identified as a variable or a code segment (including dead code) or a field in a database table, which is hardly used or executed in the context of the application or the user's functionality. Blunder genes can be found in many parts of any program. It is the contention of this paper that this phenomenon of blunders needs to be studied systematically from its very genetic origins to their surface realizations in contrast to bugs and flaws, especially in view of their importance in software copyright infringement forensics. The article discusses the idea -- expression merger aspects of programming blunders and finally, proposes the need and a way to incorporate programming blunders into Abstraction-Filtration- Comparison test, the official software copyright infringement investigation procedure of US judiciary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]