Congrats on "use stict;" - I'd also 'use warnings;" (or -w on the shebang line).

Nits: instead of:

  $time{month} = 'Dec';
  $time{day} = 12;
  $time{year} = 2003;
  $time{hour} = 14;
  $time{minutes} = 0;
  $time{seconds} = 0;
[download]

write

%time = (
    month => 'Dec',
    day => 12,
    year => 2003,
    hour => 14,
    minutes => 0,
    seconds => 0,
);
[download]

(The => operator takes care of stringifying what's to the left of it.)

Consolidating the globals (as in %w) is a good thing, though minimizing their use is beter, as others have said previously.

Why are you doing $. = 0;?

--Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com