MSN 'unable to retrieve MSN Address Book'

[Ananda Samaddar]

Hi all, long time Pidgin user here having problems with connecting to
MSN.  The error message I get is as the subject suggests:

'unable to retrieve MSN Address Book'.

I've got no idea why this is happening or how to fix it.  I've already
Googled the error and it seems like I'm not the only one having problems:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=7a8b67cacd0eda7cc9d9ba4facdc9eb6&t=1037515
http://forums.mactalk.com.au/13/65221-msn-refusing-log-adium.html

This seems to affect all libpurple based clients including Adium.  I've
already had a look at the mailing list archives and no-one seems to have
posted about this issue.  It seems to have started occurring literally
in the last twenty-four hours as well.

thanks,

Ananda