Basicaly, “they” are manipulating the difficulty by using a > 200% network switch, In order to leach cheep coins. To me that is an attack, particularly as it appears to be manually adjusted.
http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,7024.0.html
The only advantage of this has been cheep Feathercoins on the market. Because the leachers have no vested interest in the coins, they don’t hoard them.