In all fairness, the authors of PPCoin admit it is currently not fully decentralized, but they wish to remove these "broadcasted checkpoints" in a future software update - it is used for bootstrapping the coin.
I can't say that I support the idea myself, but it doesn't smell like yet another SolidCoin to me, just leaves a bad taste.
It seems to me that in order for a coin to become soiledcoin, the coin's dev must pick a fight with an uber-hacker.