Imagine a world without free knowledge.

This ominous warning met internet users across the country who attempted to access Wikipedia.com Jan. 18, 2012. In an effort to increase awareness about pending legislation which many feel would limit internet freedoms, the Wikipedia community opted to shut down the English version of the site for 24 hours.

The legislation in question is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate.

These bills were intended to combat online piracy; however, several metaphorically prone pundits have likened them to swatting a fly with a sledgehammer.

A press release on the Wikimedia Foundation website warned, “If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States.”

Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh said that Wikimedia is about organizing, summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. “We’re putting it in context and showing people how to make sense of it,” said Walsh. “But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use…(When) you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access (to).”

In a statement addressing the blackout, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said, “This is an extraordinary action for our community to take, and while we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world.”

Wikipedia was not alone in their endeavor. An estimated 7,000 websites participated in the protest Jan. 18. Most sites didn’t shut down entirely, but rather featured banners and links informing visitors of the issue. Google joined the protest by “censoring” their homepage logo with a black box and encouraging users to electronically sign their “End Piracy, Not Liberty” petition.

A letter to Washington condemning SOPA and PIPA was signed by founders of numerous high-profile internet companies. The letter expressed concern that the proposed legislation would allow the U.S. Government power to censor the web by using techniques similar to those used in China and Iran – most notably, blocking web search results.

The morning following the blackout, it was reported that Wikipedia’s homepage message was viewed 162 million times, eight million people used the provided tool to look up their representatives’ contact information and 18 senators withdrew support from PIPA.

Senate and House leaders announced Friday that action on PIPA and SOPA will be delayed.