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You might have to dust off an actual encyclopedia on Wednesday, as Wikipedia will go "black" to protest pending legislation in Congress.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees the online user-generated knowledge base, announced that it was going dark with its English language version to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, which is currently under debate in the U.S. House. The group is equally worried about the PROTECT IP Act, (PIPA), which is being proposed in the Senate.

The measures, which are backed heavily by the music and entertainment industry, has generated a tremendous amount of concern in the online world with critics saying the proposed rules would have a huge impact on the "free and open" concept behind the Internet for the past 20-years.

"We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate," said Wikimedia Foundation Board member Kat Walsh in a written statement. "And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world's knowledge. We're putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it. But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia."

The group says although the SOPA and PIPA legislation is a U.S. measure, the debate points to the broader issue of Internet-limiting legislation around the world, which is one of the reasons the Wikipedia shutdown is worldwide.

Read more at the Wikimedia website.