I've checked your link (http://acus.org/new_atlanticist/sarkozy-delays-university-reforms-feared-greek-style-riots) and it really contains malformed utf8 character with 0x96 code. This message can't be correctly decoded, that's why decoded_content fails. Also you explicitly requested to raise_error if it's not able to decode message. Try instead to get content using HTTP::Message::content and decode it using Encode::decode.