Great post, you cover a lot of the points, I'm going to try to clarify some of the other things.

CPM gets used around here quite often out of context. CPM is the Cost Per Mille (Mille means thousand in Latin). This is the cost that advertisers pay for the ads. Google takes 45% of the CPM and leaves us with the 55%. The 55% is called RPM - or Revenue Per Mille. It's sometimes refereed to as eCPM (effective CPM).

Any ad skipped before that doesn't net money for the creator.

This may be true, but likely another YT myth. There is a difference between ad views, ad impressions, and ad clicks. YouTube doesn't really come out and tell us how it works though.

giving you a strike

There is a big difference between Copyright Strikes and Copyright claims. Copyright strikes are usually valid, although there have been a few angry devs that try to force their hand and take down a big YTer's content.

Copyright claims are when the content ID system finds A/V content in your video that is copyright protected by a different entity. Some of these are valid, some are false positives.

Will a network help - maybe? Filing the dispute yourself takes all of 3 minutes as long as you already have the permission on hand to send to Youtube.

nobody has ever proceeded to suit

True. TotalBiscuit was very close to doing it on a developer from a Copyright Strike, but the developer backed down. Fair Use has never been tried in court for Let's Play videos.

If you have a copyright flag

Let's use the proper language here. Copyright claim. If you get a copyright claim, it's likely because the Content ID bot found AV content in your video. The copyright holder will get the ad revenue for that video. The Copyright Owner has different options of what they can do with your video. Mute, Block, Monetize, or Track.

I'm not a lawyer, nor an expert

Same with me.