Why do I have a strike on my account?
If your video was removed because YouTube received a copyright complaint from a third party you will receive the following message the next time you log into your account:
You receive copyright strikes when a third party notifies us that a video of yours infringes their copyright and we remove that video. When you get a strike, you receive an email notification and the strike becomes visible in your Account Settings under the Manage Account page. For users who have successfully completed Copyright School, a copyright strike may expire in 6 months as long as no additional copyright notifications are received during that time. Specifics on the removal may also be found in the Copyright Notices section of your YouTube account.
An example of a strike shown on the Manage Account page is shown below:
Additionally, you will see the following notification in the "My Videos" page within your account:
YouTube takes copyright infringement very seriously. If you receive three copyright strikes, your account and all videos uploaded to that account will be removed. In order to prevent this from happening, you should refrain from uploading videos that infringe the copyright of others.
If you do not have a strike on your account, but your video was removed, it may have been blocked by YouTube's Content ID system.
Automated identifications made through our Content ID system are separate from the copyright infringement notification process. This means that any content you do not have permission to use—whether or not identified by Content ID—may be subject to strikes in the future, should a content owner choose to notify YouTube of infringement.