I'd rather have a trusted common list of known abusers' IPs. But I think that's harder to maintain.
Here's the kicker: The server wasn't even used to send mail and hadn't been for a long time. So we had to apply for a delisting from a mail blacklist for a server that didn't send mail so that a customer could use an API.
The admin thought they were being clever, but instead they were just being difficult.