The AOL dataset

I'm currently doing some research in personalization of Distributed Information Retrieval (DIR) and I need access to some personalized query logs to do some experiments. Since I don't work for a major search engine, I don't have access to their logs and am unlikely to be granted access anytime soon. There is of course the AOL query log dataset that was released last year for research use and then quickly retracted by the company due to privacy complaints. The dataset can easily be found online. - As anybody who's ever released sensitive data online knows, it's impossible to "remove" information from the Net once it's been released.

The AOL data is exactly what I need, and I wish to use it for its intended purpose: to support research in Information Retrieval. I don't intend to pry into peoples' private lives and of course am not interested in identifying users from their logs.

My question is whether or not I am allowed (from a practical perspective) to use the data. Some conferences, like SIGIR, seem a little worried about authors using it from what hear, while others don't seem to mind. For example I saw a paper at WSDM'08 that used the data as a source of common queries to a Web search engine.

And from a legal perspective, does the fact that AOL retracted the data have any implications? Obviously AOL owns the copyright to their own data. Do I need permission from AOL in order to use their copyrighted data? Or is it considered "fair use" if I make use of the data only for research and don't distribute the raw data, just my analysis of it?