Students at Sydney University's elite residential colleges are running a secret computer network for sharing pornography and pirated movies and music.

And despite changes to disciplinary procedures promised after last year's ''pro-rape'' Facebook site scandal at St Paul's College, the university is still unable, under its code of conduct, to discipline students living in the colleges.

Student's at St Paul's and other colleges cannot be disciplined by Sydney University.

The ''peer to peer'' file-sharing network, set up by students, is operated using the intranet provided by the colleges and allows students to download data directly from one another.

The Sun-Herald understands there are thousands of hours of movies, porn and music being shared. As well as X-rated material, students say that almost every movie released in the past three years was made freely available, as well as episodes of popular US TV shows like Gossip Girl that have not yet aired in Australia.