Instead of your system call, use LWP::UserAgent. Here's some code I wrote to do the same thing.

            ## Request a web page
            use LWP::UserAgent;
            my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
            $ua->timeout($timeout);
            my $response = $ua->get($connection);
            if ($response->is_success) {
                $output = $response->content;
            }
            else {
                $output = $response->status_line;
                $exit_code = $response->code;
            }
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