opening htaccess-protected remote files

Hi,

I tried to open (and read) htaccess-protected files with 1.file() and
2.fread() like this:

1.
$url = "http://user:[email protected]";
$string = implode("\n", file($url)); 

2.
$url = "http://user:[email protected]";
$fd = fopen ($url, "r");
$contents = fread ($fd, 1000000);
fclose ($fd);

Both give me "unknown error".
Can anybody help?

Michael