You may have heard Wikipedia, the research bible for students everywhere, went black for 24 hours Wednesday. I didn’t know about it until two days before.

I had never heard of SOPA or PIPA, the acronyms for which the sixth-most visited website and other companies brought worldwide attention. The Stop Online Piracy Act, introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, targets foreign and domestic sites, and the Senate’s version, the Protect IP Act, targets only foreign websites. As described rather clearly by the Huffington Post, these pieces of legislation allow copyright holders and the U.S. Justice Department to seek court orders against websites associated with copyright infringement.

If a court order is granted, entire websites can be taken down, and the court doesn’t need to hear a defense from the actual website before issuing its ruling, effectively making it “condemned.” The anti-piracy legislation, which is backed by movie studios and recording companies, could end up shutting down sites that may use small copyrighted material its owners believed to be free under the “fair use” standards. And it could threaten social media, say, if illegal postings of copyrighted material were posted, the Justice Department could close the entire site. SOPA makes it a felony to stream copyrighted video without permission and making prison a consequence.

So one can see how bad it could get. On Friday, after a number of U.S. lawmakers and tens of millions of people began voicing disapproval of the bills, Congress postponed the vote originally scheduled for Tuesday. Google said last week its online petition drew 4.5 million people.

While a number of sites joined a black-out, including the Wordpress blogs site, Reddit and Craigslist, Wikipedia seemed to draw the most attention.

After all, it’s the premiere for quick knowledge and the go-to for homework and research projects among students. Let’s forget about the cause behind the black-out. Yes, piracy’s a problem; it’s actually a big problem (and SOPA and PIPA aren’t the ways to combat it). But last week’s 24-hour glimpse into a world without Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, that’s the real story.

So many young people couldn’t do their studies! And this is in spite of co-founder Jimmy Wales’ warning via Twitter: “Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!”

Thanks to Buzzfeed, a few tweets were collected from Twitter users talking about their ordeals. “Wikipedia can’t go! How on earth and (sic) I going to do my history homework?” tweeted one student. And this one: “Wait. I just realized that I have homework due thursday and now I can’t use Wikipedia�-�-Noooooo.” And this one: “So mad wikipedia is down for the day..realizing I use that sight for everything.”

Let’s stop online piracy. Just don’t touch Wikipedia. That’s messing education.