Who is "we"? As you said, there are people who use every trick in the book to get their money out of the surfer, and obviously, those people hurt the image our industry has in the eyes of the society and the average surfer. Then there are the honest people. Unfortunately, I don't believe surfers "spread the word" when they don't get fucked over, but do so when a porn site tricks them / fucks them over, so there are a lot of horror stories going around.
I still remember when I was a surfer, maybe not comparable to an average male surfer, but still, I was looking for porn online. I was even afraid to click links on TGP's in the fear of viruses! Should I have found a porn site that I was interested in (before I found Kazaa, lol), I probably would never have filled in my card details because of the image the online porn industry had in my eyes.
Well, thank god the average surfer isn't as much of a worrier as me, and some of them are unbelievably naive when it comes to signing up to a paysite. My site used to be a very small personal site and I would talk to most of the guys before they signed up, and I've had several cases where the guy has been drunk or whatever and asked ME to enter their details for them. And countless times people have just straight up told me their credit card details before I even got the chance to say hello. I just see these situations as a chance to make my contribution and educate these poor fuckers before they get themselves into some serious trouble.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we all benefit from the naivety of surfers in one way or another, even if we don't intend to. For example, there are always people who forget they signed up and continue to rebill for months. And with the current reputation of the online porn industry, you have to be either naive or really confident and experienced to enter your card details.
I would like to see the reputation change for the better, but all you can really do is to run your own sites in an honest way, and try and educate your surfers. I remember some people didn't like the new
"educational" section TheBestPorn.com has for their surfers, telling them about the common tricks paysites use, but I think we need more of that to bring up the reputation of this industry.