is thereany way possible to get the songs from my ipod onto a n computer?

I have about 2,000 songs on my ipod. I really do like and listen to all of them. I have paid for 500 of them and I am slowly and surely working my way toward paying for all of them believe it or not. I have a lot of struggling musician friends so I know how important it is to pay for music rather than download. However I also don't have $1400 to shell out for music all at one time. My old computer crashed and I have a new one but now if I want my music then I have to download it allllll over again. I have heard of there being ways to get the music as files from the ipod and convert them back to music or something like that. Is this true? and if it is, can someone explain to me in SIMPLE terms how to do it. I took four years of TV class, not computer classes.

Thank you.