Keep in mind that if your appeal fails, youtube may possibly ban your account indefinitely. Nostalgia Critic talked about this once in his #WTFU videos. This was part of why he was so reluctant to appeal sometimes because of the big risk that his appeal would be rejected, and that as a result his channel - his very livelihood - would be deleted.
Make no mistake, the youtube copyright system is bullstuff. Literally NO ONE likes it. There is no background checking done whatsoever by human personnel; the automation and facelessness of youtube results in fake copyright reports done by bot accounts and content holders who don't understand nor respect copyright law putting strikes on genuine rule-abiding accounts, and you can't even fight it without risking getting straight-up BANNED from YouTube. It's absolutely horrible. It needs to be redone from the ground-up.