Would it be a big No - no for you to take out those "design by" at the bottom of wordpress themes? I mean it's free an all, but designer at least should get something out of it, he/she's not asking for anything in return anyway. What do you think?
Check the designer's site for info about this. When it comes to premium WP themes, you will almost always have to pay for a branding-free option. Not like they can do anything about it if you don't, though
would it be a problem for us to copy your entire site and build backlinks to out rank you? those designers pay good money, or put their time into those styles, it's best to leave the links, but you do what you want
Well it's just that I've seen blogs that I know are wordpress because of the theme, and the themes used are free. But at the bottom of the page, the designer's name is gone.
it all depends on the license that the designer put on it. if you make enough changes to the theme some designers are fine with you removing the 'made by' link, but they usually request that you keep the credit in the css file.