I agree. When trying to coin a new terminology, try not to use one that's already been in use for 15 years or so... <i>especially</i> when they're both related to ways of transferring files. It makes even reading about their product confusing.

However, optical media is declining.

I'm probably not representative, but I haven't burnt a disc in years. It may be the right time to overload the term.

Neither have I, but I think its still much too soon to reuse the word. I think it'll be a few more years yet before people disassociate burn with writing to optical media.

Further, burning a disc has certain internal logic to it: Oh, the laser changes the medium's colour (like a sun burn, or a fire). This use of burn for a torrent doesn't really make sense to me. Why not grind or chop? (as in make a bunch of little pieces). Or maybe dice... this opens the door for silly puns quite nicely too.

It hurts my eyes to the point where I'm tempted to register torrentizr.com (it's available) and set up a competing service just so the terminology is corrected.

It's a perfectly cromulent word.

think feedburner

I still don't know what that is.

It seems like every time I stop paying attention for a week somebody has invented a new verb.

I've heard of Feedburner (and had an account for a few years), and I didn't make the association. It's not just you.

... and yet you still won't tell me what it means?

Sorry.

Basically, FeedBurner was a startup that was acquired by Google that lets you input an RSS feed, and they produce another feed. You keep the original one secret, hand out theirs, and you get analytics and other features.

Compare

http://watch.steveklabnik.com/posts.rss

to

http://feeds.feedburner.com/watch_steve_episodes

to get an idea. They called this 'burning' a feed. I guess this is what they're alluding to; give me your media file, and I'll turn that into a torrent.

I had exactly the same issue with Feedburner's name.

I thought feedburner's connotation was making a feed burn more brightly. I think burnbit is playing more off 'burning a CD/DVD'. I hadn't heard 'burn' used as a synonym for 'torrentize' before.