Unlike the legal department at Apple I believe there are some legal scenarios where you need to transfer your songs back to your computer from your iPod. We all know you can do this by unhiding the Music Folder found in the iPod_Content folder on the iPod. However if you want to transfer playlists there is an amazing app that does all this for free (read: donation…about $10 is fair I think):
http://wbyoung.ambitiouslemon.com/senuti/