I'm not able to reproduce this.

Using mIRC v7.0 I whipped up a small script:

Code:
alias vcheck {
  sockclose vcheck
  sockopen vcheck www.mirc.com 80
}

on *:sockopen:vcheck:{
  if ($sockerr) { 
    echo -a ERROR $sock($sockname).wserr : $sock($sockname).wsmsg
    return
  }
  sockwrite -n $sockname GET /get.html HTTP/1.1
  sockwrite -n $sockname host: www.mirc.com
  sockwrite -n $sockname
}

on *:sockread:vcheck:{
  var %data
  sockread %data
  if (*the latest version is* iswm %data) {
    echo -a $replace(%data,<strong>,$chr(2),</strong>,$chr(2))
    sockclose $sockname
  }
}


This runs fine and correctly echoes the mIRC version from the download page.