Valid issue. Way to counter this?
I don't think any coin can counter this (unless it was somehow GPU only I guess).
However I'll be looking into getting in on this. Registered an account just for this coin.
Couldn't you counter this with having a different way of authentication when you want to start mining? A CAPTCHA for example?
To be honest, we think the botnet posts are just baseless FUD. We have given our viewpoint here https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.5209228 and here https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.5199700
There have been plenty of CPU-resistant crypto-currencies without memory-hard algorithms that have been very successful. Probably the most well-known is Quarkcoin, but there are tons of others.