I think you're assuming that "use curl" means "shell out to /usr/bin/curl", which is, of course, a terrible idea. I'm pretty sure the gp was instead suggesting

I think you're assuming that "use curl" means "shell out to /usr/bin/curl", which is, of course, a terrible idea. I'm pretty sure the gp was instead suggesting that you should use libcurl, which is the library that powers curl-the-command-line-utility.