Dude jailed for dirty text messages lol

This seems really extreme to me. I mean the dude obviously has some issues but surely theres alternative punishment.

Yeah that appeal will go through that's ridiculous. 

I don't know how the legal system is in Australia, but in the US this isn't much of an issue, in case anyone's freaking out about going to jail for sexting. Text messages and emails are very hard to get admitted as evidence against you in trial, because of their susceptibility to manipulation and the difficulty in authenticating them.

You may, however, run into trouble if you are harassing, like this fuckhead was. He's basically going to jail because of that. And probably deserves it.

Right it was definitely harassment. The fact he looked up their records and presumably got their addresses while obtaining their phone numbers.. he was obviously doing much more than sexting.