You're redirecting STDIN so you can't read the user's input from there.

If you're on a POSIXy system you can read user input from /dev/tty: 

open T,"<","/dev/tty" or die "Can't read from /dev/tty: $!";
print "What do you want to do with this message?";

my $response = <T>;
print $response;

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"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

In reply to Re: the greedy diamond, or leggo my STDIN by Joost
in thread the greedy diamond, or leggo my STDIN by headybrew

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