Yes. I had used that variant earlier without the intermediate hash but with the same results. I used the intermediate hoping that the references would resolve to actual data during the assignment:

%{ $href } = %results;
[download]

In my example I tried using Storable's dclone() which I thought replace the references with the real data, but apparently not. I agree that it has something to do with scoping, I'm just not sure how to solve it.