LWP is easy to use

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict; 
use warnings;

use LWP::UserAgent;
use HTTP::Request;

my $url = 'http://www.cnet.com/bogus/';
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $request = HTTP::Request->new(GET => $url);
my $response = $ua->request($request);
if ($response->is_success) {
    print $response->content;
} else {
    print $response->status_line, " <URL:$url>\n";
}