I would use the LWP:UserAgent for something like this. I've used this qute a few times to cache content from parts of a website - the syntax to get the slashdot page (for example) would be something like:

# create a user agent object
use LWP::UserAgent;
my $ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
$ua->agent("AgentName/0.1 " . $ua->agent);
my $url = "http://slashdot.org";

# Create a request
my $req = new HTTP::Request GET => $url;
$req->content_type('application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
$req->content('match=www&errors=0');

# Pass request to the user agent and get a response back
my $res = $ua->request($req);

# Check the outcome of the response
if ($res->is_success)
{
  print $res->content;
}
else
{
  print "Was the URL correct?";
}
[download]

That's my two cents anyway.