I have a place on Livejournal for my thoughts. I have a lot on my mind, all the time, which isn't suitable for disclosing in a conversation with others. Given I've only shared these things with girls I've dated, I started a journal through which we keep contact. It works out fairly nicely most of the time. We keep track of each other, and it is nice to have an outlet to rant with, or bring up controversial issues and discuss it there. I can lock down certain posts so only I can see them, so it can be private, or public. I can also seperate things so only certain people can read certain things. It helps me to organize my thoughts, and get some honest feedback on my ideas that I simply wouldn't get with most people.
As far as being sued, or fired, or arrested for my journal. Bah, I can get that kind of thing from walking down the street too. The government has the legal right to tap my phone and my computer anyways, it's already to the point if you mention something you've done being illegal, you are risk of being yanked out of your house for it. Anytime you put something down you shouldn't be doing is a risk of being caught. Anyone NOT realizing that obviously hasn't thought things through well enough in the first place when starting one.
I think it's such a big thing because it's an easy way to open up to other people. I'm not shy, so I don't mind babbling about odd things to people, as I'm sure most of you have noticed.
Yet, there are things I've dealt with other people just would not understand unless they've gone through it to. There are on LJ communities and journals specifically for that purpose I've noticed. While not things I've dealt with myself, there are places where people can congregate and discuss things such as say, alcoholism, problems with your health, past abuse and such. I can rant about things done to me which shouldn't have happened but did happen, and people who went through the same thing will comment on it. I stumbled on a group of people who all went through a similar experience as I did, and now I can discuss that thing with people. It's not exactly something you can wander up to someone on the street and discuss, and otherwise, I'd have to pay some fool in a suit who has no clue what I'm talking about to listen to me.
Frankly, the child-parent situation with most families is a thing that's been bothering me. Too many handle communication the wrong way. I don't know any of the people I know of to have a blog/journal/etc. who would blatently put their "naughty" things up for everyone to see. A parent digging at journals to find out what their child was doing would probably have to lie, make a fake account, pretend to be someone else and get access to those entries. That, would be a huge breach in trust and respect and could very well ruin a parent-child relationship.
I have to say however, the logging of IP adresses in journal's can be dangerous. Someone close to me ranted about the abuse her ex put her through in her journal, he hacked through the server, found her IP address, found where she lived and had someone slash her tires in retaliation. That...is worrisome.