Haupt is the author of Stealing Empire: P2P, Intellectual Property and Hip-Hop Subversion, published by the HSRC Press in 2008. In 2010, he was a Mandela Mellon Fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, USA where he conducted research for this book. Haupt has taught at the universities of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch, and freelanced as an arts journalist for publications such as the Mail & Guardian . In the mid-nineties, Haupt set the scene for research on black youth culture with his work on pioneer rap crew Prophets of da City, whose work was banned by the apartheid regime.