Seeing that 3DS games can now be purchased and downloaded from the eshop, will the class size of an SD Card have an effect on performance of the game?
class relates to the write speed of the card, so it will come into play whenever writes are involved (downloading, saving etc). Aside from that, it shouldn't make any difference.
Would it be possible to get the game for free by making a copy of someone elses file and putting it on an sd card?
nope, each 3DS has a individual key for stuff downloaded, so if someone tries to copy it from one sd to another, if that sd card isnt going back into the same 3ds the data it came from, then that data is useless to you
Would there be a way to hack it. I mean, could i find out my specific 3ds code, then use somebody elses file but change the code in their file to the one that works with my 3ds.
Well in theory, every ecryption is crackable. Even with brute force of just letting a computer trying to figure it out using good algorythims. But I think you don't have a couple of trillion years spare time.