Using maven as a fancy wget/curl

gistfile1.xml

<project
  xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>GuavaExtensions</groupId>
  <artifactId>guavaExtensions</artifactId>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.google.protobuf</groupId>
      <artifactId>protobuf-java</artifactId>
      <version>2.4.1</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.google.guava</groupId>
      <artifactId>guava</artifactId>
      <version>12.0</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>junit</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
      <version>4.10</version>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.scalatest</groupId>
      <artifactId>scalatest_2.10.0-M4</artifactId>
      <version>1.9-2.10.0-M4-B2</version>
      <exclusions>
        <exclusion>
          <artifactId>scala-library</artifactId>
          <groupId>org.scala-lang</groupId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
          <artifactId>scala-actors</artifactId>
          <groupId>org.scala-lang</groupId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
          <artifactId>scala-reflect</artifactId>
          <groupId>org.scala-lang</groupId>
        </exclusion>
      </exclusions>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <id>default-cli</id>
            <phase>install</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <outputDirectory>./libs</outputDirectory>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

In this case, by "fancy wget/curl" do you mean pulling down files from the internet onto your local machine?

I'm looking for the other way: using Maven to upload an artifact via curl -X POST or equivalent.