LWP is Simple.

While I'm on the nerd tip, this is the simplest example I can get to grab the contents of a URL, with a optional username/password and/or proxy:

 
#!/usr/bin/perl 
 
my $proxy = undef; 
my $user  = undef; 
my $pass  = undef; 
my $url   = 'http://localhost'; 

 # Create a user agent object
 require LWP::UserAgent;
 my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

 if($proxy){ 
  $ua->proxy(
   ['http', 'ftp'], 
   $proxy
  ); 
 }
 
 # Create a request
 my $req = HTTP::Request->new(
    GET => $url
   );
 # Pass request to the user agent and get a response back
 my $res = $ua->request($req);
 if(
   defined($user) && 
   defined($pass)
 ){ 
    $res->authorization_basic(
   $user, 
   $pass
  );
 }
 # Check the outcome of the response
 if ($res->is_success) {
     return $res->content;
 }
 else {
     warn $res->status_line;
  return undef; 
 }
}

Wishing LWP::Simple would do this, but. Nope.