Ezine Articles Plugin

I’d love for this plugin to work, because I’d get so much use out of it. However, when I try to activate it, I get a fatal database error:

Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to api.ezinearticles.com:80 (Connection refused) in /home7/epochjoi/public_html/wp-includes/class-snoopy.php on line 1148

http://ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins/ezinearticles-plugin/