It appears that drakma is encoding plus signs (+) in query parameters, turning them into %2B when they should be left alone. This confuses the server in this case. You can see that if I use the :parameters keyword the request fails, but if I include the same parameters as part of the URL the request succeeds. * (setq drakma:*header-stream* *standard-output*) #<SYNONYM-STREAM :SYMBOL SB-SYS:*STDOUT* {91260B9}> * (drakma:http-request "http://freedb.org/~cddb/cddb.cgi" :parameters '(("cmd" . "cddb+lscat") ("hello" . "user+host+freedb+1.0") ("proto" . "6"))) GET /~cddb/cddb.cgi?cmd=cddb%2Blscat&hello=user%2Bhost%2Bfreedb%2B1.0&proto=6 HTTP/1.1 Host: freedb.org User-Agent: Drakma/0.11.5 (SBCL 1.0.11.debian; Linux; 2.6.24-19-generic; http://weitz.de/drakma/) Accept: */* Connection: close HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:17:36 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) Expires: Mon Jul 7 16:17:37 2008 Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 "500 Command syntax error: incorrect arg count forhandshake. " 200 ((:DATE . "Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:17:36 GMT") (:SERVER . "Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux)") (:EXPIRES . "Mon Jul 7 16:17:37 2008") (:CONNECTION . "close") (:TRANSFER-ENCODING . "chunked") (:CONTENT-TYPE . "text/plain; charset=UTF-8")) #<PURI:URI http://freedb.org/~cddb/cddb.cgi?cmd=cddb%2Blscat&hello=user%2Bhost%2Bfreedb%2B1.0&proto=6> #<FLEXI-STREAMS:FLEXI-IO-STREAM {BA65021}> T "OK" * (drakma:http-request "http://freedb.org/~cddb/cddb.cgi?cmd=cddb+lscat&hello=user+host+freedb+1.0&proto=6") GET /~cddb/cddb.cgi?cmd=cddb+lscat&hello=user+host+freedb+1.0&proto=6 HTTP/1.1 Host: freedb.org User-Agent: Drakma/0.11.5 (SBCL 1.0.11.debian; Linux; 2.6.24-19-generic; http://weitz.de/drakma/) Accept: */* Connection: close HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:17:42 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) Expires: Mon Jul 7 16:17:42 2008 Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 "210 OK, category list follows (until terminating `.') data folk jazz misc rock country blues newage reggae classical soundtrack . " 200 ((:DATE . "Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:17:42 GMT") (:SERVER . "Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux)") (:EXPIRES . "Mon Jul 7 16:17:42 2008") (:CONNECTION . "close") (:TRANSFER-ENCODING . "chunked") (:CONTENT-TYPE . "text/plain; charset=UTF-8")) #<PURI:URI http://freedb.org/~cddb/cddb.cgi?cmd=cddb+lscat&hello=user+host+freedb+1.0&proto=6> #<FLEXI-STREAMS:FLEXI-IO-STREAM {BAAA461}> T "OK" *