Download a theme from a live site

You could get the CSS and build it yourself.

Or you could ask the owner of the site

If you were simply to grab (or even replicate) someone else’s theme without asking that would potentially be copyright infringement. Why should you be able to simply copy another person’s work wholesale?

It would be a good idea for many reasons to ask before taking.

Ever think that perhaps.. they spent a long time creating the theme and haven’t released it because they don’t want to?

yep,
i dont want to rip it off completely… its just that i suck at coding and wouldnt be able to do it myself from scratch… but im sure its a very easy theme to do for someone experienced.

And im not going to sell the template or anything, ill use it for my site and thats it…

This is a kind of grey area. It is really bad form when a designer is releasing free themes for people to rip off his own site. ?? It does happen. But everyone’s CSS is there for all to read and to some extent all inovative work is inspired by what went before it. It would be about striking a good balance I guess. A link to the *inspiration* would certainly take the sting out of any angst.