While we're on the topic of HTML and web modules, has anyone had a change to play around with HTTP::GHTTP? It's written by Matt Sergeant (mod_perl nut) to basically do exactly what this anonymous monk is asking:

use HTTP::GHTTP 'get';
print get $uri;
[download]

It also has a more feature-rich object-oriented interface. It looks incredibly promising (especially since LWP is such a behemoth), but I haven't gotten around to installing libghttp yet, so I haven't seen it in action.

When I saw that syntax this guy was using, I immediately thought of HTTP::GHTTP, though.