Software :: DynDns - Getting Error Message Every 5 Minutes

I have a registered account with DynDns, and every month I am sent a reminder that my account will expire because it is not in use (i.e. inactive). I think the problems stems from my system's inability to register itself on a periodic basis using ddclient. This is the error I am getting:

Code:
Mar 4 06:53:09 iceland ddclient[2352]: WARNING: cannot connect to checkip.dyndns.org:80 socket: IO::Socket::INET: Bad hostname 'checkip.dyndns.org'
When I ping 'checkip.dyndns.org', I do so successfully. I can also connect to its port 80 (using a port-scanner application I developed). So why the error? I get the same error message every 5 minutes. I have a Fedora 9 OS. Below is the relevant portion of my /etc/ddclient.conf file (with the username and password changed for security purposes):

Code:
...
## To obtain an IP address from Web status page (using the proxy if defined)
use=web, web=checkip.dyndns.org/, web-skip='IP Address' # found after IP Address ...
Somehow I feel that the contents of /etc/hosts may be responsible for the error, but I'm not sure.

Code:
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost iceland.localdomain iceland
::1 localhost6.localdomain6 localhost
My system's name is 'iceland'.