Lex Luthor sends Superman a video threatening the earth. Superman posts that video to YouTube, hoping to garner public support for his upcoming moon mission.
Lex Luthor sends a DCMA takedown to YouTube alleging that he owns the rights to the video and that Superman had no right to post it.
It seems like you have an objection to the DMCA, but the story about space lasers is a bit hard to understand. I'm not sure what your complaint is. The reason I chose "Lex Luthor" is because choosing a name makes it easier to understand hypothetical scenarios (instead of using them/they everywhere, or "the infringing party"), and because he took forty cakes, and that's as many as four tens.
To torture another metaphor, this may only be one starfighter against a star destroyer, in that case, if you don't have an ion canon, kamikazing the shield generators is an option, but not your first choice.
Don't ask me what the DMCA is in that metaphor :P
For any weaker party, targetting the problem itself is too expensive to start with, especially if the defendant is the only one currently making money off the product (the accuser only has external funds to work with, no matter how valuable the product is/was, while the defender has both product value and external funds; DMCA can remove one of those revenue streams)
If you are basing your argument on a metaphor but can't explain the metaphor then maybe it's time to step back and reevaluate your argument. "Target it directly" is Hollywood advice, it's insane to use that as your only legal strategy.
You send DMCA takedown notices to innocent parties, that's how they work, that's how they're designed to work, that's the only way they work at all. If you want to send something to a guilty party then you send a lawsuit instead.
You can't send a DMCA takedown notice to Lex Luthor's office supplier, because the office supplier doesn't claim DMCA safe harbor. YouTube does, Steam does, so you can send DMCA takedown notices to Steam and YouTube. You can't send DMCA takedown notices to Lex Luthor, his office supplier, or the publisher at fault here.
In effect, the DMCA takedown notice is just a way of telling YouTube, "Lex Luthor does not have the rights to this video." This is not going after YouTube in any meaningful way. This is exactly what the DMCA is designed to do... prevent YouTube or Steam from being targets of lawsuits. Because Steam accepts DMCA takedown notices, they are protected from certain lawsuits for copyright infringment. DMCA takedown is a process where you tell Steam about third-party copyright infringement, and they remove the content and this clears Steam of liability.
When Lex Luthor posts my video on YouTube, I can do two things: I can send a DMCA to YouTube and I can sue Lex Luthor. Suing Lex Luthor is expensive, so I start with the DMCA takedown notice to YouTube.