It sounds more like a tarpit than a honeypot. Tarpits are meant to slow down attackers and honeypots are to detect them. But really, it's neither of them, it's just giving false information (email addresses) to spammers.
I was under the impression that providing fake email addresses (etc) was what a honeypot did. I heard the term when I was talking with my friend (who's also really interested in network security) and the network security professor at my university and they used the term. I asked what it was, and that's the rough definition the gave to me. I didn't ask anything further because I didn't find it very interesting, but meh.
A honeypot is a security program/sensor that detects any kind of attacks directed at it. In some cases, it feigns vulnerabilities/os to trick the remote attacker/program into thinking its vulnerable. Depending on the honeypot, anything can be detected: worms, viruses, spam, attacks, etc., and it can be used for protection, study, trending, etc.
In the context of spam, a honeypot would be a site that gives fake, monitored email addresses. Spam arriving at those addresses is cataloged or studied or something. That may very well be what your friend was talking about.
A tar-pit is a security program that tries to slow down attackers by responding slowly to attacks or wasting their time (network or CPU). If I recall correctly, the most common one, la brea, will negotiate the window size (the amount of data that can be sent without acknowledgment) lower and lower, until the connection is nothing but a series of acknowledgments. Or something similar. I'm not sure whether or not providing fake email addresses that go nowhere could be considered a type of tarpit, though.
Honeypots and Tarpits are both interesting, though. I say you're crazy!
