An international panel representing a selection of governments from around the world has registered more than 240 objections to proposed generic top level domains, including .wtf, .baby, and .islam.

The Governmental Advisory Committee has contacted each applicant directly with an Early Warning notice which generally asks for further information or requests clarification, but in some cases advises withdrawal of an application.

Maintaining a healthy online business ecosystem is a big consideration, so a number of the notices deal with terms relating to regulated market sectors (.finance, .casino, and .dental) and warn applicants that they must have safeguards in place to mitigate potential misuse and minimise the likelihood of harm to consumers.

More generic terms such as .skin (L'Oreal's application), .baby (from Johnson & Johnson Services Inc), and .antivirus (Symantec Corporation) are coming under scrutiny for their anti-competitive potential. As a result all three companies have both been asked to "specify transparent criteria for third party access to the TLD."

The suffixes .wtf, .fail and .sucks have also received warnings for having an "overtly negative or critical connotation" without offering sufficient mechanisms to limit the need for businesses to immediately engage in defensive domain registrations to protect their brands.

Other warnings of note include those dealing with .bible, .islam, and .ooo. Religious terms are being queried regarding their capacity to fairly represent the large communities they reference and to prevent abuses of the domain, particularly where a private company rather than a not-for-profit or governmental organization has made the application. The .ooo suffix has been compared with Australia's "visually similar" triple zero emergency phone number and flagged because of "a risk that this proposed TLD could result in confusion for some consumers in life-threatening situations."

A number of the applications have been advised to withdraw immediately, particularly those involving the registration of country and territory names such as .patagonia and .africa. Under the current TLD registration guidelines, country and territory names are reserved and can only be registered with the express agreement of the relevant governments and authorities.

The warnings do not constitute formal judgements but flag up potential issues and information gaps to both applicants and to the organisation tasked with managing domain names, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). New TLDs which are given ICANN's approval are expected to go live from 2013.