Oh dear, I was afraid something like this was bound to happen sooner or later.
I'll try to break this to you gently. It's a "caveat emptor" world out there. I'll spare you the boring song and dance about what happens, and why it happens -- especially why it happens to nice folks like you -- and cut to the chase.
Are you sitting down? OK, here it comes: that guy who convinced you to buy a copy of Internet Explorer? Well... how can I put this? He saw you coming.
Yes, KB, it is free.
I'm truly sorry for you, but there's not much that can be done at this stage, sadly.
What we see here is a failure to communicate. KB's reference was clearly to the closed-source nature of IE. You see the "free beer", he's looking for "free speech".
Btw, the "first hit" is also free.