We can say that opinion are of great diversity. I also noticed many stereotype and some sub culture bad practice that received too much media attention.
First, on a culture basis, Indonesian doesn't perceive animal the way westerner does. Animal are food waiting to be eaten or they are pest. Even the Indonesian zoo are horrible as an animal caring level.
That being said, civet were killed on sight before because they were seen as rats. Even caged civet has a better life now than before, because of the Kopi Luwak. *Not talking about the exception of abused force feds animal*. Most concern of bad treatment to the animal mostly come from the people catching the animal and bringing it to the market to sell it to coffee producer. These people are uneducated villagers who don't really consider the animal as something alive other than for the money it will provides them. The farmer on the other hand has all the motivation to keep the animal healthy and in good shape to have a good production. Most caged civet I've seen had quite big cage and looked good. Now of course wild civet have a better life now, but only because Kopi Luwak exist, otherwise they would been killed on sight with traps everywhere.
As per the taste of Kopi Luwak, like people said, the quality of the bean and where it comes from play a role in the quality of the cup. On the other end, it should remove some of the bitterness because the scale of the bean has been digested and removed from the bean and it should also lower the acidity of the bean and keeping only the subtle flower, earth taste of where the bean grew. So it should make the bean better than without the civet. But still an Ethiopian coffee without civet of an exceptionnal quality could still be better than a civet bean from a very bad plantation. We have to compare bean with bean not civet with bean.
People that are scared to eat shit, you have to know that part of the process is to separate the bean from the excrement of the animal. What is left is white bean without the scale. After that is is water cleaned to remove residue of the animal. Once the bean are all clean, the bean are roasted. If you know biology, you probably know that no virus or bacteria, harmful to human can survive 100°C for 20 minutes. Hospital Sterilization procedure is 120°C by steam under pressure for about 15 minutes. Heat is the key ingredient, steam is just efficient to infiltrate deep inside object that require sterilization. (
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/sterile/basics.aspx#TheSterilizationProcess)
There is no danger to consume Kopi Luwak for the health, if the roasting wasn't enough to kill all germ, the barista will surely finished the job quite effectively.